In mythology Kronos was said to have used an adamantine sickle to castrate his father Uranus in Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is bound to the rocks "in adamantine bonds infrangible", in Virgil's Aeneid (in which the gates of Tartarus are protected by columns of solid adamantine) and in Paradise Lost, in which adamant and adamantine are mentioned eight times to describe the gates of hell, Satan's shield, fallen angel's armour and Satan's chains. Adamant and the literary form adamantine (utilising the suffix -ine meaning 'of the nature of' or 'made of') occur in many works. Diamond is also derived from the same word. The English word is used both as a noun and an adjective and is derived from the Latin: adamans, adamantem referring to the property of impregnable, diamondlike hardness, or to describe a very firm/resolute position, itself from the Greek word adamastos meaning untameable. Fictional elements and materials NameĪs a noun, adamant has long been used to designate any impenetrably or unyieldingly hard substance and, formerly, a legendary stone/rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness and with many other properties, often identified with diamond or lodestone.
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