adamant
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 9:49 am
• adamant •
Pronunciation: æ-dê-mênt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective & Noun
Meaning: 1. [Adjective] Unyielding, stubborn, unbreakable. 2. [Noun] An extremely hard stone or other substance.
Notes: Today's word has the obvious adverb, adamantly, and a noun adamancy. Adamantive means the same thing as adamant though it comes to its sense via "like an adamant (the noun)". Remember that it ends on ANT and you should have no spelling or pronunciation problems.
In Play: Adamancy is the ultimate stubbornness: "Polly Graf was adamant in her denial that she even touched the ice cream carton in the freezer." You are adamant only if there is no possibility whatsoever that you will change your mind: "Friedrich adamantly insisted that we all finish our vegetables before dessert would be served."
Word History: In Middle English today's word referred to a hard precious stone, usually a diamond. The word comes from Latin adamas, adamant-. This word was transliterated letter for letter from Greek, where it originally meant "invincible, unconquerable" from a- "not" + dama- "to tame". Later it came to mean "hard steel or stone" and, finally, "diamond". In fact, our word diamond came from the same source via Old French diamant after the D switched places with the initial A (metathesis) and the first A became I. (We are adamantly offer our gratitude to Chris Stewart today for sending us this fascinating word all the way from South Africa.)
mark huh? Bailey
Pronunciation: æ-dê-mênt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective & Noun
Meaning: 1. [Adjective] Unyielding, stubborn, unbreakable. 2. [Noun] An extremely hard stone or other substance.
Notes: Today's word has the obvious adverb, adamantly, and a noun adamancy. Adamantive means the same thing as adamant though it comes to its sense via "like an adamant (the noun)". Remember that it ends on ANT and you should have no spelling or pronunciation problems.
In Play: Adamancy is the ultimate stubbornness: "Polly Graf was adamant in her denial that she even touched the ice cream carton in the freezer." You are adamant only if there is no possibility whatsoever that you will change your mind: "Friedrich adamantly insisted that we all finish our vegetables before dessert would be served."
Word History: In Middle English today's word referred to a hard precious stone, usually a diamond. The word comes from Latin adamas, adamant-. This word was transliterated letter for letter from Greek, where it originally meant "invincible, unconquerable" from a- "not" + dama- "to tame". Later it came to mean "hard steel or stone" and, finally, "diamond". In fact, our word diamond came from the same source via Old French diamant after the D switched places with the initial A (metathesis) and the first A became I. (We are adamantly offer our gratitude to Chris Stewart today for sending us this fascinating word all the way from South Africa.)
mark huh? Bailey
