nymph

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Greek & Roman Mythology Any of numerous minor deities represented as beautiful maidens inhabiting and sometimes personifying features of nature such as trees, waters, and mountains.
2. n. A girl, especially a beautiful one.
3. n. The larval form of certain insects, such as silverfish and grasshoppers, usually resembling the adult form but smaller and lacking fully developed wings. Also called nympha.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In mythology, one of a numerous class of inferior divinities, imagined as beautiful maidens, eternally young, who were considered as tutelary spirits of certain localities and objects, or of certain races and families, and whose existence depended upon that of the things with which they were identified. They were generally in the train or company of some other divinity of higher rank, and were believed to be possessed of the gift of prophecy and of poetical inspiration. Nymphs of rivers, brooks, and springs were called Naiads; those of mountains, Oreads; those of woods and trees, Dryads and Hamadryads; those of the sea, Nereids, The name was also used generally, like muse, for the inspiring power of nature.
2. n. Hence, a young and attractive woman; a maiden; a damsel.
3. n. In entomology, the third stage of an insect's transformation, intervening between the larva and the imago; a pupa; a chrysalis; a nympha. See cuts under Termes and Nysius.
4. n. In insects which undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, the stage in which the wing-pads appear.

Wiktionary

1. n. The larva of certain insects.
2. n. Greek & Roman mythology Any minor female deity associated with water, forests, grotto, etc.
3. n. A young girl, especially one who inspires lustful feelings.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Class. Myth.) A goddess of the mountains, forests, meadows, or waters.
2. n. A lovely young girl; a maiden; a damsel.
3. n. (Zoöl.) The pupa of an insect; a chrysalis.
4. n. (Zoöl.) Any one of a subfamily (Najades) of butterflies including the purples, the fritillaries, the peacock butterfly, etc.; -- called also naiad.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a voluptuously beautiful young woman
2. n. (classical mythology) a minor nature goddess usually depicted as a beautiful maiden
3. n. a larva of an insect with incomplete metamorphosis (as the dragonfly or mayfly)