faun

American  

[fawn] / fɔn /

noun

Classical Mythology.

1. one of a class of rural deities represented as men with the ears, horns, tail, and later also the hind legs of a goat.

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faun British  

/ fɔːn /

noun

1. (in Roman legend) a rural deity represented as a man with a goat's ears, horns, tail, and hind legs

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Other Word Forms

• faunlike
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of faun

1325–75; Middle English (< Old French faune ) < Latin faunus; cf. Faunus

Explanation

A faun is a mythological creature that's half human and half goat. Go to many art museums and you'll see paintings of fauns cavorting through the forest or playing a flute. The faun first appeared in Roman mythology, and it's turned up in many art forms since then. There are paintings and sculptures of fauns from the 1800s, and a ten-minute symphonic piece by Claude Debussy, called "The Afternoon of a Faun" in English. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a book called "The Marble Faun," and the Chronicles of Narnia's character Mr. Tumnus is a faun. The word comes from the Latin Faunus, a god of the countryside.

Example Sentences

Since their older children started school, Faun Fables now tours almost exclusively in the summer.

From Slate • Feb. 1, 2018

The flat, angular pose emerges as a wholly unexpected abstraction of famous photographs of Nijinsky dancing his radical "Afternoon of a Faun."

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 21, 2016

Dancing Sculpture: The Faun at Pompeii Since dance is the art of movement, it’s endlessly fascinating to see how artists have depicted it in fixed, unchanging images — especially in painting, drawing and sculpture.

From New York Times • Jan. 26, 2016

For a striking sense of how Hellenistic artists used the form, spend some time with a sculpture known as the Dancing Faun.

From Washington Post • Dec. 13, 2015

She’d left the House of the Faun just after breakfast.

From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan