adamant的意思

adamant

英 ['?d?m(?)nt] 美 ['?d?m?nt]

1. 亞當(Adam)是最堅強的男人，螞蟻(ant)是最堅強的動物.

adamant 堅決的

前綴a-, 無，不。詞根dam, 同tame,馴服。無法馴服的，堅定的。diamond,鉆石，詞源同。

adamant: adamant: [14] In Greek, adamas meant ‘unbreakable, invincible’. It was formed from the verb daman ‘subdue, break down’ (which came from the same source as English tame) plus the negative prefix a-. It developed a noun usage as a ‘hard substance’, specifically ‘diamond’ or ‘very hard metal’, and this passed into Latin as adamāns, or, in its stem form, adamant-. Hence Old French adamaunt, and eventually English adamant.
=> diamond, tame
adamant (adj.): late 14c., "hard, unbreakable," from adamant (n.). Figurative sense of "unshakeable" first recorded 1670s. Related: Adamantly; adamance.
adamant (n.): mid-14c., from Old French adamant and directly from Latin adamantem (nominative adamas) "adamant, hardest iron, steel," also figuratively, of character, from Greek adamas (genitive adamantos) "unbreakable, inflexible" metaphoric of anything unalterable, also the name of a hypothetical hardest material, perhaps literally "invincible," from a- "not" + daman "to conquer, to tame" (see tame (adj.)), or else a word of foreign origin altered to conform to Greek.

Applied in antiquity to a metal resembling gold (Plato), white sapphire, magnet (by Ovid, perhaps via confusion with Latin adamare "to love passionately"), steel, emery stone, and especially diamond (see diamond). "The name has thus always been of indefinite and fluctuating sense" [Century Dictionary]. The word was in Old English as aeamans "a very hard stone."

1. The Americans are adamant that they will not budge on this point.: 美國人非常強硬，他們在這一點上是不會妥協的。

3. Pearce remained adamant, saying "I didn't touch him": 皮爾斯仍舊堅定不移地說：“我沒有碰過他。”