adamant

Adamant and similar words are used to refer to any especially hard substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal. Both adamant and diamond derive from the Greek word αδαμας (adamas), meaning "untameable". Adamantite and adamantium (a metallic name derived from the Neo-Latin ending -ium) are also common variants.

Throughout ancient history, "adamantine" referred to anything that was made of a very hard material. Virgil describes Tartarus as having a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamantine (Aeneid book VI). Later, by the Middle Ages, the term came to refer to diamond, as it was the hardest material then known.

It was in the Middle Ages, too, that adamantine hardness and the lodestone's magnetic properties became confused and combined, leading to an alternate definition in which "adamant" means magnet, falsely derived from the Latin adamare, which means to love or be attached to.^[1] Another connection was the belief that adamant (the diamond definition) could block the effects of a magnet. This was addressed in chapter III of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, for instance.

Since the word diamond is now used for the hardest gemstone, the increasingly archaic "adamant" — and its adjectival form "adamantine" — has a mostly poetic or figurative use. In that capacity, the name is frequently used in popular media and fiction to refer to a very hard substance.

Examples of use

• In Norse mythology, Loki is bound underground by adamantine chains. (In some versions, his chains are made from the intestines of his son.)
• In the Medieval epic poem The Faerie Queene Sir Artagel's sword is made of Adamant.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings it is said in the second verse of Bilbo's Song of Eärendil, regarding the appearance of Eärendil; "Of adamant his helmet tall". Additionally, at the crowning of King Elessar, it is said that his crown "was adorned with jewels of adamant".
• In the King James Version of the Bible the word adamant is also used in several verses, including:

  "As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they [be] a rebellious house." (Ezekiel 3:9) Other, later translations substitute the word diamond for adamant.

See also

• Adamantane, a bulky hydrocarbon
• Adamantine, a real mineral
• Adamantium in the Marvel Universe.
• A list of fictional chemical substances.
• Mithril, a strong, silvery metal from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
• Vajra, an adamantine ritual implement in Tantric Buddhism

References

1. ^ Webster's dictionary definition of adamant, 1828 and 1913 editions

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