adamantine
adjective
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The Greek and Latin word for the hardest imaginable substance, whether applied to a legendary stone or an actual substance, such as diamond, was adamas. Latin poets used the term figuratively for things lasting, firm, or unbending, and the adjective adamantinus was applied in similar contexts. The English noun adamant (meaning "an unbreakable or extremely hard substance") as well as the adjective adamant ("inflexible" or "unyielding") came from adamas. Adamantine, however—which has such figurative uses as "rigid," "firm," and "unyielding"—came from adamantinus. Adamas is also the source of diamond. Diamas, the Latin term for diamond, is an alteration of adamas.
Examples of adamantine in a Sentence
Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2025
Image My first collision with the adamantine wall of Vivamayr house rules coincided with my arrival.
—Caity Weaver, New York Times, 25 Jan. 2025
Although Bush and Obama both flirted with what was once called entitlement reform, Trump and Biden now present themselves as adamantine defenders of Social Security and Medicare, each accusing the other of secretly aiming to cut those programs.
—Matthew Karp, Harper's Magazine, 2 Oct. 2024
This view is much in vogue today, casting China not as a country that responds to pressure and incentives but as an adamantine force incapable of reacting to external stimuli.
—Julian Gewirtz, Foreign Affairs, 13 Oct. 2020
This poor little deer had to be sacrificed by your adamantine reviewer to show you how the new tool works.
—PCMAG, 30 May 2024
At the Guggenheim Bilbao, at Glenstone, at SF MoMA and in St. Louis — in so many places around the world — Serra’s adamantine sculptures act on you.
—Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2024
She is known for her aphoristic precision and intense, adamantine paragraphs.
—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Feb. 2022
So contrary to what Gordon suggests, effective teaching, as Weber saw it, involves much more than pitting students’ opinions against adamantine facts.
—Peter E. Gordon, The New York Review of Books, 19 Nov. 2020
Cite this Entry
“Adamantine.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adamantine. Accessed 10 Jul. 2025.
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adamantine
adjective
Medical Definition
adamantine
adjective
-ˌtīn
-ˈmant-ᵊn
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