Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Greek Mythology One of the nymphs who lived in and presided over brooks, springs, and fountains.
- n. The satellite of Neptune that is closest to the planet.
- n. The aquatic nymph of certain insects, such as the mayfly, damselfly, or dragonfly.
- n. An aquatic plant of the genus Naias.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In Greek and Roman mythology, a water-nymph; a female deity presiding over springs and streams. The Naiads were represented as beautiful young girls with their heads crowned with flowers, light-hearted, musical, and beneficent.
- n. In botany, a plant of the genus Naias; also, sometimes, any plant of the Naiadaceæ.
- n. One of the naiades or pearly fresh-water mussels; a fresh-water mollusk as distinguished from an oceanid or marine mollusk.
Wiktionary
- n. Greek mythology A female deity (nymph) associated with water, especially a spring, stream, or other fresh water.
- n. entomology The aquatic larva (nymph) of a dragonfly or damselfly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Myth.) A water nymph; one of the lower female divinities, fabled to preside over some body of fresh water, as a lake, river, brook, or fountain.
- n. (Zoöl.) Any species of a tribe (
Naiades ) of freshwater bivalves, including Unio, Anodonta, and numerous allied genera; a river mussel. - n. (Zoöl) One of a group of butterflies. See Nymph.
- n. (Bot.) Any plant of the order Naiadaceæ, such as eelgrass, pondweed, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (Greek mythology) a nymph of lakes and springs and rivers and fountains
- n. submerged aquatic plant having narrow leaves and small flowers; of fresh or brackish water
Etymologies
- Latin naias, from Ancient Greek Ναϊάς (Nāïas, "naiad"), from νάειν (naein, "to flow"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Latin nāias, nāiad-, from Greek nāias, probably from nān, to flow; see (s)nāu- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“She was a child of the whole world, as the naiad is the child of the river, and the oread of the mountain.”
“I know, I had said the naiad was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, but she had been wet and dirty, and, even though she looked like she’d risen out of a Pre-Raphaelite pond, unmistakably Twenty-First Century.”
“The gold satin bow waved in the breeze at me, looking like a willowy naiad or dryad from Greek mythology.”
“No faun, no selkie, no naiad, and the stocks of human and Centaur-in the cold-larders and in the fattening pens-were (so he said) dangerously low.”
“It is easy to see how a gnat-cloud might be seen as a dancing naiad, a water sprite.”
“And worse still, she's being shadowed by her ditsy twin sister -- a naiad who simply can't seem to stay out of trouble.”
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“Was there a marble fountain, which superstition had dedicated to some sequestered naiad — it was surrounded by olives, almond and orange trees — its cistern was repaired, and taught once more to retain its crystal treasures.”
“Mecistaeus, exterminates Dresos and Opheltios, Esepius, and that Pedasus whom the naiad Abarbarea bore to the blameless Bucolion; Ulysses overthrows Pidytes of Percosius; Antilochus, Ablerus; Polypaetes,”
“While the Bread and Circus Product Placement Olympi-ad mercifully distracts some from crashing banks, anthrax cover-ups and sub-penis envy, I am doing last minute lobbying of OOC for larger time clock numbers at the pool for my myopic 41 year old naiad shero.”
“The naiad hummed under her breath and the gills on the side of her neck yawned pink against her pale blue skin.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘naiad’.
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Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
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Written on Water
An eclectic list of words pertaining to and describing water.
"...I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the...water, rain, cistern, thirst, dead-water, eddy-water, surge, flood, ebb, fluid, flow, liquor amnii and 202 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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LIT - Iliad - key words and protagonists
depict, delegation, daughter, Dardanus, Dardanian, Dardan, Hellespont, cupbearer, Crete, Cretan, Creon, copulate and 713 more...
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Nouns
weequash, aquabib, selcouth, tyrotoxism, sylph, penchant, adjuration, incantation, hummel, pyromancer, rhabdomancer, hydromancer and 14 more...
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Nethack words
Words you mainly only encounter whilst playing Nethack.
troglodyte, skirmisher, coalesce, djinni, stripling, uncursed, Elbereth, tripe, lichen, grid bug, kobold, naiad and 16 more...
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esotericisms
words that make me warm inside
kinemacolour, sardonic, entente, saturnine, ens, ensanguine, causa sui, entelechy, epicheirema, ex post facto, peccadillo, illation and 27 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Words I'd Like to Use Someday
thundersnow, phantasmagoria, mercurial, chimerical, taciturn, paraclete, lapis lazuli, flay, guttersnipe, wonky, misanthrope, kestrel and 583 more...
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ikahime's Words
callipygian, squidocracy, epicene, alkahest, syzygy, pysmatic, ideopraxist, quandary, vulpine, fandango, ataraxia, exsanguinate and 92 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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NeoVolt's Words
schadenfreude, serendipity, idiosyncrasy, loess, caducous, vagary, schematic, steeple, licentious, tangential, verisimilitude, vernacular and 385 more...
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Fictional beasties
elf, gnome, dwarf, sprite, troll, fairy, nymph, imp, brownie, sasquatch, yeti, wookiee and 574 more...
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pixistix's Words
cumquat, circumlocution, panoply, propinquity, contumely, quietus, fardel, tmesis, tipsy, giddy, trudge, vortex and 211 more...
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Alaric's Words
chelation, bradykinetic, twelfth, dank, kulak, oneiric, cathexis, yonder, quern, lissome, naiad, krakatoan and 124 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
Tweets
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fbharjo Greek satellite of Neptune: a type of dragonfly: from Greek "to flow" Aug 13, 2008