Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828)

Displaying 1 result(s) from the 1913 edition:

Adamant (Page: 19)

Ad"a*mant (#), n. [OE. adamaunt, adamant, diamond, magnet, OF. adamant, L. adamas, adamantis, the hardest metal, fr. Gr. , ; priv. + 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 substance of extreme hardness; but in modern minerology 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. [Obs.] A great adamant of acquaintance." Bacon.

As true to thee as steel to adamant. Greene.