adamant

/ˈædəmənt/

/ˈædəmənt/

Other forms: adamants

If you stubbornly refuse to change your mind about something, you are adamant about it.

This word's story begins in ancient Greece, where philosophers spoke about a legendary unbreakable stone or metal they called adamas (literally, "invincible"). In English, people began to use the word to refer to something that cannot be altered, and then in the twentieth century — after adamant had been in English for about a thousand years — it came to be used as an adjective to mean "unyielding as stone." If you're adamant about something, no amount of persuasion is going to convince you otherwise.

Definitions of adamant

1. noun

   very hard native crystalline carbon valued as a gem
   synonyms: diamond

   types:

   black diamond, carbonado

   an inferior dark diamond used in industry for drilling and polishing

   type of:

   C, atomic number 6, carbon

   an abundant nonmetallic tetravalent element occurring in three allotropic forms: amorphous carbon and graphite and diamond; occurs in all organic compounds

   transparent gem

   a gemstone having the property of transmitting light without serious diffusion
2. adjective

   impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, or reason
   “he is adamant in his refusal to change his mind”

   synonyms: adamantine, inexorable, intransigent

   inflexible

   incapable of change