Sylph
[sɪlf]
Definition
(noun.) an elemental being believed to inhabit the air.
(noun.) a slender graceful young woman.
Editor: Pasquale--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) An imaginary being inhabiting the air; a fairy.
(n.) Fig.: A slender, graceful woman.
(n.) Any one of several species of very brilliant South American humming birds, having a very long and deeply-forked tail; as, the blue-tailed sylph (Cynanthus cyanurus).
Checker: Roland
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Fairy, fay.
Checker: Olivier
Definition
n. one of the elemental spirits of the air intermediate between immaterial and material beings occasionally holding intercourse with human creatures: a fairy.—n. Sylph′id a little sylph.—adjs. Sylph′ine Sylph′ish.
Typed by Josephine
Unserious Contents or Definition
n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to gnomes nymphs and salamanders which dwelt respectively in earth water and fire all now insalubrious. Sylphs like fowls of the air were male and female to no purpose apparently for if they had progeny they must have nested in inaccessible places none of the chicks having ever been seen.
Typed by Claire
Examples
- Mrs Veneering, always charmed by this rattling sylph, cries. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield.
- Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon's. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
Checker: Monroe