adage (adaj)

[F. adage, Unle the adage must be verified, That beggars, mounted, run their horse to death. 65 Not that Adam that kept the paradise, but that Adam that keeps the prison. Shak., C. of E., iv. 3. Adam and Eve, the popular name in the United States for a certain terrestrial orchid, A plectrum hiemale.Adam's ale, Adam's wine, water, as being the only bev erage in Adam's time: sometimes called Adam. [Colloq.] A Rechabite poor Will must live, And drink of Adam's ale . Prior , Wandering Pilgrim. Sirrah,. go bring A cup of cold Adam from the next purling spring. Tom Brown , Works, IV. 11. Adam's apple. (a) Pomum Adami , the prominence on the fore part of the throat formed by the anterior part of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx: so called from the notion that a piece of the forbidden fruit stuck in Adam's throat. The protuberance is specially noticeable in the male sex after puberty, as the larynx enlarges in boys at the time when the change in the voice occurs. (b) A va- riety of the lime, Citrus medic a , with a depre ion which is fancifully regarded in Italy as the mark of Adam's teeth. See Citrus . (c) A name sometimes given to the plantain, the fruit of Musa paradisiac a.- Adam's flannel, the common mullen, Verbascum Thapsus.- Adam's needle and thread, a common name of Yucca Ala mentos a. adamant (ad'a-mant), n. [ adamant , adamaunt, ademäunt, adamaund , also athamant , atthamant, etc. (after AS. athamans ), and ad mont , aimant = Pr. adiman , aziman , ayman = Sp. Pg . iman , adimas (* adimant- ), L. adam as ( adamant- ), δαμᾶν , conquer, = L. domare = E. tame , q. v.), first used (by Homer) as a personal epithet; later (in Hesiod and subsequent writers) as the name of a very hard metal such as was used in armor-prob. steel, but endowed by imaginative writers with supernatural powers of resistance; in Plato, also of a metal resembling gold; in Theophrastus, of a gem, prob. a diamond; in Pliny, of the diamond, under which he includes also, perhaps, corundum; in Ovid, of the magnet; in later writers regarded as an anti-magnet. The name has thus always been of indefinite and fluctuating sense. From the same source, through the perverted ML. forms diamans , diamentum , comes E. diamant, diamond, q. v.] 1. A name applied with more or le indefinitene to various real or imaginary metals or minerals characterized by extreme hardne : as (1) the diamond, (2) the natural opposite of the diamond, (3) a lodestone or magnet, and (4) an anti-magnet. The garnet and diamond, or adamant . Sullivan , Views of Nature, I. 438. ( N. E. D. ) The adamant cannot draw yron, if the diamond lye by it. Lyly, Euphues, sig. K, p. 10. ( N. E. D. ) The grace of God's spirit, like the true loadstone or Shak., 3 Hen. VI., i. 4. adamant , draws up the iron heart of man to it. =Syn. Aphorism , Axiom , Maxim , etc. See aphorism. adagialt (a-dā'ji-al), a . Of the nature of or containing an adage: as, "that adagial verse," Barrow , Works, I. 93.