hamadryad
English edit
Etymology edit
Latin Hamadryas, from Ancient Greek Ἁμαδρυάς (Hamadruás), from ἅμα (háma, “together”) + δρῦς (drûs, “tree”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
hamadryad (plural hamadryads or hamadryades)
- (Greek mythology) A wood-nymph who was physically a part of her tree; she would die if her tree were felled.
- 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVIII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 301:
- The hamadryades have gone, like the golden fancies of which they were engendered—morning dreams of a young world scarce awake, but full of freshness and beauty. Yet often will the thought, or rather the fancy, come across me, that this wailing but most musical noise—heard in the dim evening, when every tree has a separate sound like a separate instrument, and every leaf a differing tone like the differing notes—is the piteous lament of some nymph pent within the gray and mossy trunk whence she may never more emerge in visible loveliness.
- 1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 106:
- The various supports, rafters, braces and plates are of pandanus logs of a rich oily brown, and make one think of a sylvan cathedral where hamadryads might very well dance, where Syrinx might be chased by Pan, Daphne by Apollo, and various other heathen rites take place in the dark hours before the dawn.
- The king cobra.
- A baboon of species Papio hamadryas, venerated by the ancient Egyptians.
- Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genera Hamadryas and Tellervo.
Translations edit
a woodnymph
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The king cobra
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