Sylphes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An imaginary spirit of the air, often pictured as a delicate winged being ; a slim, graceful young woman
2. A mythical air spirit imagined as a tiny, winged figure ; a slender and elegant female figure
3. A delicate supernatural being of the air in folklore ; a person, typically a woman, with a light and graceful build

Etymology: Sylphes is the plural of "sylph," a noun for an air spirit, so it is the form readers meet when a poem or novel has several of these creatures at once. The singular was coined in the early 1700s by the Swiss-born alchemist and physician Paracelsus's followers, and it was the Renaissance writer Paracelsus who first described such beings in his writings on elemental spirits. The Renaissance Latin "sylphus" and its relatives likely came from that tradition, though the exact source of the name is uncertain. The word's modern fame is due to Alexander Pope, who borrowed the idea for The Rape of the Lock (1712), where sylphs guard the heroine Belinda. Pope's poem made the sylph a sprite of fashionable drawing rooms rather than a learned elemental spirit, and that is the image most English readers still carry.

Synonyms: sylphs, nymphs, fairies, sprites