Ad″a‐mant (ăd″ȧ‐mănt), n. [OE. adamaunt, adamant, diamond, magnet, OF. adamant, L. adamas, adamantis, the hardest metal, fr. Gr. αδἄμασ, -αντοσ; ἀ priv. + δαμᾳ̑ν to tame, subdue. In OE., from confusion with L. adamare to love, be attached to, the word meant also magnet, as in OF. and LL. See Diamond, Tame.] 1. A stone imagined by some to be of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness; but in modern mineralogy it has no technical signification. It is now a rhetorical or poetical name for the embodiment of impenetrable hardness.
Opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield.
Milton.
2. Lodestone; magnet. “A great adamant of acquaintance.” Bacon.
As true to thee as steel to adamant.
Greene.