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  1. selkie love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A creature or spirit in Scottish and Irish folklore that has the form of seal but can also assume human form.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Irish mythology A seal which can magically transform into a human.

Etymologies

  1. From Old English seolh ("seal"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Dialectal diminutive of seal2. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • ““A selkie is a seal creature who can remove his or her pelt and assume human form,” Munro said.”

    Simon & Schuster: The Shape-Shifter’s Curse

  • “His latest, Ondine (2009, Paramount, 12), finds Jordan returning to more rewardingly lyrical fare with a whimsical tale of a lonely fisherman (Colin Farrell) who catches a "selkie" (half woman, half seal) and finds himself entrapped in a tightening emotional net.”

    The Guardian: Mark Kermode's DVD round-up

  • “The "selkie" object is a seal that was washed up onto the beach.”

    Amelia's World

  • “Also if she was a "selkie" she would not be "distained by the islanders".”

    Hh Com 333

  • “I like "selkie" tales but your query does not atttract me. sorry.”

    Hh Com 333

  • “a mermaid, but she could be a selkie, which is even better, because selkies aren't like fish from the waist down.”

    Kitsap Sun Stories

  • “Annie (Alison Barry), Syracuse's young daughter, researches Irish folklore and tells her father that Ondine is a "selkie," a sort of washed-ashore mermaid who can return to the water only after finding her lost "seal coat.”

    post-gazette.com - News

  • “It was wonderful, an Orkney village confronted with a swan, a selkie, and a dragon, and the consequences of allowing (or forcing) them to live among humans, as humans.”

    "And when the waves came crashing down, he closed his eyes and softly kissed her."

  • “In “For One Who Has Lost Herself,” the price is the awful truth that comes after the end of a story we already pretty much knew; that is, what happens to the selkie after the young man who stole her sealskin has vanished.”

    "Into a light that lingers."

  • “She took me to the very spot where she had been delivered from her widowed mother by a selkie midwife and laid down upon the sand, pulling me down beside her.”

    On Desperate Seas « A Fly in Amber

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same context (20)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. full-bore
  2. sweat-slick
  3. enemies'
  4. sun-bronzed
  1. sun-darkened
  2. bad-luck
  3. poreless
  4. warm-tinted
  1. yuzu
  2. incantatory
  3. tight-stretched
  4. perianal
  1. frogs'
  2. sweat-dampened
  3. psoriatic
  4. wizardwood
  1. bark-like
  2. once-living
  3. tannish
  4. peaches-and-cream

reverse dictionary (1)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. silkie

tags (5)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. fey
  1. myth
  1. Irish
  1. wotd
  1. word-of-the-day

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Lists

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Comments

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  • jgould With his hand on the wheel
    Midst selkie and seal
    Unsure as to which one was real.

    He brought one to lair
    Right into the air
    Trying to transform to a pair.

    Oh Selkie! he cried
    I was alone, could have died
    Now I'm happily sealed for a ride.


    Jun 15, 2010

  • john “The childish, romantic story of “Ondine” is about a West Cork fisherman named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) who one day snags a lovely, breathing young woman in his net. This comely catch, who gives her name as Ondine (Alicja Bachleda), isn’t a mermaid, but might be another, more locally familiar sort of mythic beast, a selkie: a woman who is also a seal.”

    The New York Times, Neil Jordan’s Possible World of the Impossible, by Terrence Rafferty, May 28, 2010 Jun 1, 2010

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‘selkie’ has been looked up 2216 times, loved by 9 people, added to 41 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.