Diamond

How to spell diamond

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce diamond

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diamond mean?

1. nounA precious stone made of crystallised carbon, prized for its hardness and brilliance.
2. nounA four-sided figure with equal sides standing on one of its points, a rhombus.
3. nounOne of the four suits in a deck of playing cards, marked with red rhombus symbols.

Diamond in a sentence

• The engagement ring held a single brilliant diamond.

• The warning sign was a yellow diamond at the side of the road.

• He played a low red diamond to win the trick.

• Industrial drills are often tipped with diamond because the mineral is so hard.

• The quilt pattern repeated a small red diamond across every panel.

• Only one diamond remained in her hand after the round.

Where does diamond come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek adamas, meaning 'unconquerable' or 'invincible', which was used for the hardest known substance, from a- 'not' and daman 'to tame or subdue'. Latin took it as adamantem (the source of the English 'adamant', meaning unyielding), and in later Latin the word drifted into the form diamas, probably influenced by Greek words beginning with dia-. English borrowed it through Old French diamant in the 1200s, applied to the brilliant, exceptionally hard gemstone. The wandering middle vowels are exactly the spelling trap: the modern word keeps the 'i-a' pairing from that Latin-French reshaping, even though many people say it as two syllables and drop the middle 'a'. Its cousin 'adamant' is a useful memory hook, since both come from the same idea of something that cannot be broken.

How the word is built

• diamond (from Greek adamas: unconquerable, hardest substance); the Greek root survives whole in the modern word