sylph

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“
He is shut up with her for ten days or so; she is as graceful as a sylph, and has a tender sort of baby face that's enough to distract a man, and I don't see how he could possibly leave that vessel without being in love with her, unless some other woman had already got hold of his heart.

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A slim, graceful woman or girl.
  2. noun In the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, a being that has air as its element.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • And the Gasperau in particular is an attractive little mountain sylph, as it comes skipping down the rocks, breaking here and there out in a broad cascade, or rippling and singing in the heart of the grand old forest. —  Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses
  • I have never yet prowled around this part of the world as much as I pleased I see where I grow thin and sylph-like," beamed Jerry. —  Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore
  • Hortense de Vere, queen of the air, when that sylph-like lady came out into the arena of Forepaugh's great circus-tent last evening, and poised herself upon one tiny toe on the back of an untamed and foaming Arabian barb that dashed round and round the sawdust ring. —  Second Book of Tales
  • Yes, though naturally modest and polite, he stood and stared And small blame to him, as Flynn might have said, for before him stood his ideal of a fairy, an angel, a sylph--or anything beautiful that best suits your fancy, reader! —  Blue Lights Hot Work in the Soudan
  • From her baby name of Neenizu_, my dear life, she was called Leelinau, but she never attained to much size, remaining very slender, but of the most pleasing and sylph-like features, with very bright black eyes, and little feet. —  The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. New Latin sylpha, perhaps blend of Latin sylvestris, of the forest (from silva, sylva, forest) and Latin nympha, nymph; see nymph.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = Dutch silphe, silfe = German sylphe = Danish sylfe = Swedish sylfe, from French sylphe = Spanish silfo = Portuguese sylpho, from New Latin sylpha, a factitious name, found in Paracelsus, apparently from Greek σίλφη, a kind of beetle. Other names of elemental spirits (nymph, gnome, salamander) are taken from the Greek, only one (nymph) having such use in Greek, the others being, like sylph, arbitrary. The spelling sylph (New Latin sylpha), with y instead of i, seems to have been used to make it look more like nymph, and because to occultists and quacks like Paracelsus words spelled with y look more Greek and convincing. As salamander, orig. ‘a kind of lizard supposed to live in fire,’ was made, by an easy transfer, to mean ‘a spirit of fire,’ and gnome, quite arbitrarily (see gnome), was made to mean ‘a spirit of earth,’ so sylph, orig. (in the Greek σίλφη) ‘a beetle or insect,’ seems to have been taken as ‘a light flying creature,’ hence ‘a spirit of the air.’ According to Littré the name was based on an Old Celtic word meaning ‘genius,’ given in the Latinized plural forms sulfi, sylfi, sylphi, masculine, sulevæ, suleviæ, feminine
 

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/sɪlf/
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