Nymphidia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A long comic poem by the English writer Michael Drayton, published in 1627, that tells of fairy queen Mab and her court
2. The 1627 mock-heroic verse narrative by Michael Drayton that recounts the fairy world of Oberon and Queen Mab
3. An early seventeenth-century English poem by Michael Drayton, written in a playful epic style about the diminutive fairy court

Etymology: Nymphidia is the title of a mock-heroic fairy poem by Michael Drayton, first published in 1627, and the word itself is a coinage in that poem rather than an older term. Drayton built it on "nymph," from Latin "nympha" and Greek "nymphē," meaning a bride or young woman, and later a minor divinity of rivers, woods and springs. The ending "-ia" is a classical-style suffix, often used in Latin for collective or place names, and Drayton applied it to make a name for a whole realm of fairy folk. Because the poem is a playful work, the word carries the same light tone: it names the fairy kingdom in which the tiny queen Mab rides through the night. Its use in English is therefore essentially literary and tied to Drayton's invention, and it did not spread into everyday speech.