ADAMANTINE

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does adamantine mean? 

• ADAMANTINE (adjective)
  The adjective ADAMANTINE has 3 senses:

1. consisting of or having the hardness of adamant

2. having the hardness of a diamond

3. impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason

  Familiarity information: ADAMANTINE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ADAMANTINE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Consisting of or having the hardness of adamant

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Pertainym:

adamant (very hard native crystalline carbon valued as a gem)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having the hardness of a diamond

Similar:

hard (resisting weight or pressure)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason

Synonyms:

adamant; adamantine; inexorable; intransigent

Context example:

an intransigent conservative opposed to every liberal tendency

Similar:

inflexible (incapable of change)

 Context examples 

The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six yards high.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes, and desires.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr. Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the adamantine Jorkins, if he would undertake the task.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And the king, when he is highest provoked, and most determined to press a city to rubbish, orders the island to descend with great gentleness, out of a pretence of tenderness to his people, but, indeed, for fear of breaking the adamantine bottom; in which case, it is the opinion of all their philosophers, that the loadstone could no longer hold it up, and the whole mass would fall to the ground.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)