Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A slim, graceful woman or girl.
- n. In the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, a being that has air as its element.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An imaginary being inhabiting the air; an elemental spirit of the air, according to the system of Paracelsus, holding an intermediate place between material and immaterial beings. Sylphs are male and female, have many human characteristics, and are mortal, but have no soul. The term in ordinary language is used as feminine, and often applied figuratively to a young woman or girl of graceful and slender proportions.
- n. In ornithology, one of various humming-birds with long forficate tail: so called from their grace and beauty: as, the blue-tailed sylph, Cynanthus forficatus. See cut under sappho. Synonyms Elf, Fay, etc. See
fairy .
Wiktionary
- n. mythology An invisible being of the air
- n. The elemental being of air, usually female.
- n. A slender woman or girl, usually graceful and sometimes with the implication of sublime station over everyday people.
- n. A mainly dark green and blue hummingbird, the male of which has a long forked tail.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An imaginary being inhabiting the air; a fairy.
- n. Fig.: A slender, graceful woman.
- n. (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of very brilliant South American humming birds, having a very long and deeply-forked tail.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a slender graceful young woman
- n. an elemental being believed to inhabit the air
Etymologies
- First attested in 1657. From New Latin sylphes, coined by Paracelsus in the 16th century. The coinage may derive from sylva and nympha. (Wiktionary)
- New Latin sylpha, perhaps blend of Latin sylvestris, of the forest (from silva, sylva, forest) and Latin nympha, nymph; see nymph. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Your sylph is a delightful girl, but you must learn to be more light-hearted when you call on her.”
“A sylph is a fairy made of air who likes to play cruel tricks on little girls.”
“The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked round her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation.”
“But they don't call the sylph-like Ms. Middleton Weighty Katie,'' if you gather my drift.”
“_ -- Another butterfly, but belonging to a widely different group, is the "sylph" (_Hestia Jasonia_), called by the”
“sylph" (_Hestia Jasonia_), called by the Europeans by the various names of _Floater, Spectre, _ and _Silver-paper-fly_, as indicative of its graceful flight.”
“Up until the time Clayton arrived, Mother hovered about me like a magic sylph, fluttering her tiny wings, touching a strand of hair here, brushing out a crease there, straightening my necklace and checking to be sure my perfume was not too strong and not too weak.”
“For this past week I have read Mark of the Demon & Blood of the Demon by Diana Rowland, The Battle Sylph by LJ McDonald (trying very hard to find the shattered sylph) and Lion's Heat by Lora Leigh.”
“By the time her first album came out, in 1985, she'd been given a thorough makeover: the cover photo showed a sleek-haired, golden-skinned sylph wearing an elegantly-draped white gown.”
“Sent by Ben and his beloved sylph bride, Willow, to an exclusive girls 'prep school, headstrong (and half-magical) Mistaya Holiday has found life in the natural world a less than perfect fit.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sylph’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Up In The Air @ Wordnik
List of words, terms, and phrases pertaining to or referencing anything that lives, traverses, moves in, uses, or otherwise occupies the space above the ground we walk on. Words and phrases contain...
aeroallergen, aerial, aerial mapping, aerial root, aerobe, aerobiology, aerobioscope, aelophilous, anemotropism, anemoclastic, anafront, antitrades and 273 more...
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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supernatural creatures according to M...
Turned this up on etymonline.com (link). It's amazing.
Hobbit (n.)
1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole...ghost, boggle, bloody-bones, spirit, demon, ignis fatuus, brownie, bugbear, black dog, specter, shellycoat, scarecrow and 186 more...
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phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
sabaton, sabbatarian, sabbulonarium, sabelline, sabin, sable, sabliere, sabot, sabretache, sabulous, saburration, saccade and 1593 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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Naked
Words relating to getting naked, being naked, the commonly naked, nakedness (partial or complete), and similar.
denude, strip, stripper, harlot, Cyprian, fancy woman, lady of pleasure, hooker, divest, unfrock, unclothe, disrobe and 115 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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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 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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Aeolus's Vocabulary
Words concerning or relating to wind, air, sky, or heavens! Anything concerning Aeolus (King of the Winds) will be collected here.
aeromancy, zephyr, favonius, boreas, ether, etesian, empyrean, wind, breeze, gust, cyclone, nor'easter and 18 more...
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a bestiary
soucouyant, revenant, sylph, Merope, Pleiades, nymph, sibyl, calypso, eidolon, kif, Scylla, Naiads
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the lascivious
orgiastic, nymph, breathless, writhe, calypso, Medusa, virago, sapphic, catamite, bisou, buss, succubus and 48 more...
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Poetic
the blue hour, dinner-pail, long-drawn, pettifog, spoonmeat, crawler, eructate, voiced, medial, tessellated, eyeballs, amphigory and 48 more...
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Words I like
A list contrived for the sole purpose of storing words I like to include in my writing; words that inspire or carry power for me.
contrite, meadow, sward, ossary, calumny, moribund, necropolis, chthonic, murmur, erstwhile, chime, beryl and 63 more...
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Gothic
Words that would not be unwelcome in a gothic story or poem.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sylph.

ruzuzu "The word "silphid" or "sylph", first seen in the sixteenth century in Paracelsus' works, refers to any race of spirits inhabiting the air and is described as mortal, but lacking soul. The word is also related to the Latin word sylva meaning "slender, graceful girl" and the Greek word nymph meaning "light, airy movements"."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silphidae&oldid=488077928 Jul 19, 2012
wordwench And excuse me, but a sylph is also an air elemental. I imagine they are all hmphing about now. Mar 12, 2009
wordwench Ahh. Now all the world is a hazy green and I await a warmish breeze. Mar 12, 2009
lechatnoir Yesteryear's sylph is today's MILF. Mar 12, 2009
reesetee No, it actually puts me in mind of silk and soft. Funny how that works, huh? :-) Mar 27, 2007
alguien Really? It doesn't sound like silt+phlegm to you? Mar 27, 2007
reesetee Hmm...I've always liked the word myself.... Mar 27, 2007
alguien Sylph sounds like it should be something disgusting, like the glop at the bottom of a polluted river. Mar 27, 2007
brtom "... a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow ..."
Joyce, Ulysses, 15 Jan 29, 2007