Adamant - Definition and Overview

Adamant is 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". The word adamant is comparable to the word brimstone, an archaic word for sulfur.

Since diamond is now used exclusively for the hardest gemstone, the increasingly archaic adamant–and its adjectival form adamantine–has a mostly poetic or figurative use. For instance, in mediæval mythology, "adamant" was a hypothetical impenetrably hard mineral, and a similar use is often seen in fantasy fiction. Adamantium and adamantite are also common variants.

Examples of use

• 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), although later translations substitute the word diamond for adamant.

• In Greek mythology, Cronus uses an adamantine sickle to cut his father, the Titan Uranus. Unlike iron, adamant can affect the gods.
• In Norse mythology, Loki is bound underground by adamantine chains.
• In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the tower of the fortress built by the character Lord Asriel is made of adamant.
• In Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, Sir Artegal's golden sword Chrysaor was said to be "Tempred [sic] with Adamant".
• In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the bottom of the flying isle of Laputa is made of adamant. The gigantic lodestone in the Astronomers' Cave that enables the island to move is also supported by adamant.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Galadriel's ring Nenya is also named the "Ring of Adamant".
• The TV cartoon character Atom Ant's name is likely a pun on adamant.
• In the Marvel Universe, adamantium is one of the strongest known metals, used in Wolverine's claws and skeleton, Bullseye's skeleton and some of Ultron's robotic bodies.
• In the movie Forbidden Planet, adamantine steel was the material used to build "cloud piercing towers".
• In several fantasy role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, there is a material named adamantine or adamantite.
• In John Milton's Paradise Lost Satan is bound in adamatine chains.

Other uses of the word

• In Roman mythology, Tartarus is sealed with columns of solid adamant (see Aeneid VI, Virgil).
• The Adamant was an iron barque (sailing ship) that brought immigrants to New Zealand in the late 19th century.
• Adam Adamant Lives was a BBC television series in the 1960s.
• Adam Ant was a New Romantic singer of the 1980s.
• The Adamant Music School is a piano school located in the village of Adamant, Vermont just north of Montpelier. The Adamant Press is also located in the village.

See also

• A list of fictional chemical substances.
• Adamantium, the super-strong metal from the Marvel Universe.