Adamant vs Balk - What's the difference?
adamant | balk |
An imaginary rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness.
* {{quote-book
, year= 1582
, year_published=
, author=
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, title= The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution
, url= http://books.google.com/books?id=gvbik25DcCgC&pg=PT144
, original=
, chapter= 8
, section =
, isbn=
, edition=
, publisher= G. Flinton
, location=
, editor=
, volume=
, page=
, passage= This then is and alwayes hath ben the fashion of Worldlinges, & reprobate persons, to harden their hartes as an adamant stone, against anye thinge that shalbe tolde the for amendement of their lives, and for the savinge of their soules.
}}
An embodiment of impregnable hardness.
* 1956 , , The City and the Stars , p 34
A magnet; a lodestone.
* 1594–96 , :
ridge, an unplowed strip of land
* Fuller
beam, crossbeam
A hindrance or disappointment; a check.
* South
A sudden and obstinate stop; a failure.
(sports) deceptive motion; feint
# (baseball) an illegal motion by the pitcher, intended to deceive a runner
# (badminton) motion used to deceive an opponent during a serve
(archaic) To pass over or by.
To omit, miss, or overlook by chance.
(obsolete) To miss intentionally; to avoid; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk.
* Evelyn
* Bishop Hall
* Drayton
To stop, check, block.
To stop short and refuse to go on.
To refuse suddenly.
To disappoint; to frustrate; to foil; to baffle; to thwart.
* Byron
To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition.
* Spenser
To leave or make balks in.
To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles.
* Shakespeare
To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.
(Webster 1913)
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As nouns the difference between adamant and balk
is that adamant is an imaginary rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness while balk is ridge, an unplowed strip of land.As an adjective adamant
is firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.As a verb balk is
(archaic) to pass over or by or balk can be to indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.adamant
English
(wikipedia adamant)Alternative forms
* adamaunt (obsolete)Synonyms
* See alsoReferences
*Noun
(en noun)- Unprotected matter, however adamant , would have been ground to dust ages ago.
- You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant :
- But yet you draw not iron, for all my heart
- Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,
- And I shall have no power to follow you.
Derived terms
* adamance (pos n) * adamantane (pos a) * adamantean (pos a) * adamantine (pos a) * adamantly (pos adv)References
* ----balk
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) balke, (etyl) balca, either from or influenced by (etyl) .Alternative forms
* baulkNoun
(en noun)- Bad ploughmen made balks of such ground.
- a balk to the confidence of the bold undertaker
Verb
(en verb)- By reason of the contagion then in London, we balked the nns.
- Sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat.
- Nor doth he any creature balk , / But lays on all he meeteth.
- The horse balked .
- to balk expectation
- They shall not balk my entrance.
- In strifeful terms with him to balk .
- (Gower)
- Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights, / Balk'd in their own blood did Sir Walter see.