What does adamantine mean?
Word: Adamantine
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Adamantine means very hard and strong, so that it seems nothing could ever break it. It is a literary word, used in poems and stories, and can also describe a person's will or purpose.
Synonyms: unbreakable, unyielding
Antonyms: fragile, breakable
How do you spell adamantine?
Syllables: ad - a - man - tine
Tricky part: The stressed syllable is man, but many pupils write men there (adamentine), the same slip they make in adamant.
Watch out for: adamentine, adimantine
Memory tip: Stress the third syllable and hear its vowel: it is the short a of cat and man, never the e of ten.
Adamantine in a sentence
Example 1: Years of crashing waves have barely marked the adamantine cliffs along this coast.
Example 2: The poet described the frozen lake as an adamantine floor that rang under the skaters.
Example 3: Mira's adamantine focus never slipped during the long chess final.
Fun Fact
It shares its root with diamond: both go back to the Greek adamas, a name once given to the hardest stone or metal people could imagine.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
addamantine
a) a
b) d
c) t
d) n
Show answer
b) d. The word opens with a single d, straight after the first a.
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
adamant_n_
a) e, a
b) i, e
c) y, e
d) e, e
Show answer
b) i, e. The last syllable rhymes with mine: an i, then a silent e at the end.
Spell-o-Spell
Three of these words are spelt correctly. Choose the meaning of the misspelt one:
1. transparant 2. brilliant 3. magnificent 4. adamantine
a) clear enough to see through
b) very grand and beautiful to look at
c) extremely bright or clever
d) extremely hard and impossible to break
Show answer
a) clear enough to see through. Transparent is the misspelt word in the list: it ends in ent.
Word Connection
Choose the antonym of the word adamantine as used in the sentence:
Mira's adamantine resolve to finish the marathon kept her running through the rain.
a) unbending
b) steely
c) feeble
d) resolute
Show answer
c) feeble. Steely, unbending and resolute all mean firm like the word itself; feeble means weak and easily given up.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A writer who calls a friend's patience adamantine means that it ____.
a) is shown only to people she has just met
b) runs out after only a few minutes
c) never gives way, however hard it is tested
d) changes from day to day with her mood
Show answer
c) never gives way, however hard it is tested
2. Which of these would a poet be most likely to call adamantine?
a) a cliff of dark granite
b) a bubble drifting upwards
c) a soft woollen scarf
d) a puddle after the rain
Show answer
a) a cliff of dark granite
