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Adamant and similar words are used to refer to any especially hard substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal. Both adamant and diamond derive from the Greek word αδαμας (adamas), meaning "untameable". The word adamant is comparable to the word brimstone, an archaic word for sulphur.

Since diamond is now used exclusively for the hardest gemstone, the increasingly archaic adamant–and its adjectival form adamantine–has a mostly poetic or figurative use. For instance, in medieval folklore, "adamant" was a hypothetical impenetrably hard mineral, and a similar use is often seen in fantasy fiction. Adamantite and adamantium (the metal version of adamant) are also common variants.

Adamant as an adjective means resistant to reason, determined or inflexible.

• In Greek mythology, Cronus uses an adamantine sickle to castrate his father, Uranus. Unlike iron, adamant can affect the gods.
• In Roman mythology, Tartarus is sealed with columns of solid adamant (see Aeneid book VI, Virgil).
• In Norse mythology, Loki is bound underground by adamantine chains. (In some versions, his chains are made from the intestines of his son.)
• In the King James Version of the Bible the word adamant is also used in several verses, including:

  "As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they [be] a rebellious house." (Ezekiel 3:9), although later translations substitute the word diamond for adamant.

• In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales the word is used in The Knight's Tale, "where cruel gods ... written in an table of adamant" (decide over the fate of this world).
• In Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, Sir Artegal's golden sword Chrysaor was said to be "Tempred [sic] with Adamant".
• In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the bottom of the flying isle of Laputa is made of adamant. The gigantic lodestone in the Astronomers' Cave that enables the island to move is also supported by adamant.
• In John Milton's Paradise Lost Satan is bound in adamantine chains.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel's ring Nenya is named the "Ring of Adamant". Also, it is mentioned that the Tower of Orthanc was made of an adamant-like material, and Bilbo's song about Eärendil says that his helmet was made of adamant.
• In the movie Forbidden Planet, adamantine steel was the material used to build "cloud piercing towers".
• In RuneScape, adamant refers to a greenish armor (full name is Adamantite, most of the time referred to as "Addy") that requires a Defence Level of 30 to wear, weapons also require level 30 attack to use. Players can also mine Adamantite which requires a mining level of 70, they can smith it into weapons and armour which require smithing levels varying from 70-88. Adamantite also exists in World of Warcraft.
• In most Final Fantasy worlds, adamantite is an extraordinarily hard metal used to craft weapons and armor of like quality. These are among the best equipment that can be found. In addition, a common enemy called the adamantoise is a gigantic tortoise whose shell is composed of adamantite. Adamantoises are usually high-level enemies if not bosses.
• In Marvel's X-Men, one of the characters, Wolverine, has claws made of adamantium.

• Adamantane, a real compound which is a bulky hydrocarbon
• A list of fictional chemical substances.
• Adamantane[1], a litterary place
• Mithril, a strong, silvery metal from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
• Adamantium, the super-strong metal from various fictional universes, or adamantium in the Marvel Universe.