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Origin and history of adamant

adamant(adj.)

late 14c., "hard, unbreakable," from adamant (n.). The figurative sense of "unshakeable" (in belief, etc.) is by 1670s. Related: Adamantly; adamance.

also from late 14c.

adamant(n.)

"a very hard stone," mid-14c., adamant, adamaunt, from Old French adamant "diamond; magnet" or directly from Latin adamantem (nominative adamas) "adamant, hardest iron, steel," also used figuratively, of character, from Greek adamas (genitive adamantos), the name of a hypothetical hardest material.

It is a noun use of an adjective meaning "unbreakable, inflexible," which was metaphoric of anything unalterable (such as Hades) and is of uncertain origin. It is perhaps literally "invincible, indomitable," from a- "not" (see a- (3)) + daman "to conquer, to tame," from PIE root *deme- "to constrain, force, break (horses)," for which see tame (adj.). "But semantically, the etymology is rather strange," according to Beekes, who suggests it might be a foreign word altered in Greek by folk etymology, and compares Akkadian (Semitic) adamu.

Applied in antiquity to a metal resembling gold (Plato), white sapphire (Pliny), magnet (Ovid, perhaps through confusion with Latin adamare "to love passionately"), steel, emery stone, and especially diamond, which is a variant of this word. "The name has thus always been of indefinite and fluctuating sense" [Century Dictionary]. The word had been in Old English as aðamans, but the modern word is a re-borrowing.

also from mid-14c.

Entries linking to adamant

diamond(n.)

mid-14c., diamaunt, diamond, "extremely hard and refractive precious stone made of pure or nearly pure carbon," from Old French diamant, from Medieval Latin diamantem (nominative diamas), from Vulgar Latin *adiamantem (which was subsequently altered by influence of the many Greek words in dia-), from Latin adamantem (nominative adamans) "the hardest metal," later, "diamond," from Greek adamas (genitive adamantos), name of a hypothetical hardest material, noun use of an adjective meaning "unbreakable, inflexible," a word of uncertain origin (see adamant (n.)).

From early 15c. as "person of great worth" (a sense also in Latin). From late 15c. as "geometric figure of four equal straight lines forming two acute and two obtuse angles." From 1590s as "playing-card stamped with one or more red diamonds." In baseball, "square space enclosed within the four bases," is American English, by 1875. As an adjective "resembling, consisting of, or set with diamonds," from 1550s.

tame(adj.)

c. 1200, of persons, "in a state of subjection, physically subdued, restrained in behavior;" mid-13c., of animals, "domesticated, reclaimed from wildness," also, of persons, "meek, gentle-natured, compliant, intent on homely or domestic activities," from oblique forms of Old English tom, tam "domesticated, docile."

This is reconstructed to be from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (source also of Old Norse tamr, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch tam, Old High German zam, German zahm "tame").

This in turn is said to be (Watkins) from PIE *deme- "to constrain, to force, to break (horses)" (source also of Sanskrit damayati "tames;" Persian dam "a tame animal;" Greek daman "to tame, subdue," dametos "tame;" Latin domare "to tame, subdue;" Old Irish damnaim "I tie up, fasten, I tame, subdue"). A possible ulterior connection is with PIE *dem- "house, household" (see domestic (adj.)).

Gentle animals are the naturally docile; tame animals are made so by the art of man. The dog, the sheep, are gentle animals ; the wolf, the bear, are sometimes tame. [William Taylor Jr., "English Synonyms Discriminated," London: 1813]

The meaning "spiritless, weak, dull, uninspiring, insipid" is recorded from c. 1600. Related: Tamely; tameless; tameness. As a noun by c. 1300, "tame beasts."