NYMPH • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Nymph

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noun

nymph n.

(Class. Myth.) A goddess of the mountains, forests, meadows, or waters. "Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?"

Hence: A lovely young girl; a maiden; a damsel. "Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered."

(Zool.) The pupa of an insect; a chrysalis.

(Zool.) Any one of a subfamily (Najades) of butterflies including the purples, the fritillaries, the peacock butterfly, etc.; called also naiad.

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Etymology of 'Nymph'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nymph" Quotes from Famous Books

... graceful. Her eyes seemed large and dark, Martina, like her hair; her face was tinted like a rich-hued rose. Oh! were I a man she seemed such a one as I should love, who, like all my people, have ever worshipped beauty. Yet, what did I say, that she put me in mind of a nymph of Greece. Nay, that was not so. It was of a goddess of Old Egypt that she put me in mind, for on her face was the dreaming smile which I have seen on that of a statue of mother Isis whom the Egyptians worshipped. Moreover, ...

— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... forsaken husband to obtain possession of her again. But fraud, not force, is the means employed, as in the Lapp story of the Maiden out of the Sea, where the mermaid's clothes are once more confiscated. In a legend of Llyn y Dywarchen (the Lake of the Sod), not very far from Beddgelert, the water-nymph subsequently appears to her husband, conversing with him from a floating turf while he stands on the shore. Here the motive of the reappearance is the unusual one of conjugal, ...

— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... "You look like a nymph of Botticelli's," commented Alden, with a smile. There was no trace of confusion, or even of consciousness in his manner, and, once again, Edith reproached herself for ...

— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... station. Merton floundered out, threw his arms round the necks of each of the roughs, yelled to their companions in the next carriage to follow, and staggered into the third- class refreshment room. Here he leaned against the counter and feebly ogled the attendant nymph. ...

— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... tried to obtain even a glimpse of the fall. Adverse Fate led us up and down, and round and round, and backwards and forwards, amid a labyrinth of overgrown bushes which might have bewildered an Australian settler; and still the nymph of the waterfall coyly hid herself from our eyes. Our ears informed us that the invisible object of which we were in search was of very inconsiderable height; our patience was evaporating; our time ...

— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

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