faun

American  

[fawn] / fɔn /

noun

Classical Mythology.

• fauns
  plural

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

Derived Forms

• faunlike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• fauns
  plural

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

See Examples For:

faun fauns

Donatello delivers himself to justice, no longer the preternatural faun but a man of grave responsibility.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026

“The certificate is a fake, ditto the signature, ditto the spelling, ditto the drawing,” she told The New York Times in reference to one of the works, a drawing of a faun.

From New York Times ● Dec. 25, 2022

Instead, he reminds me of a curious faun: skittery, friendly, interested but naturally shy.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 20, 2019

David Gyasi turns in a wonderful performance as a faun named Agreus, who defies social order and purchases a nice house in a nice community and as one might imagine, the neighbors are not thrilled.

From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2019

The little bronze faun cast a shadow across the dry fountain.

From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan

But little actually felt contemporary in this lollipops program of swans and fauns that, musically at least, might have been one of those old-timey Hollywood Bowl “Rhapsody Under the Stars.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2022

Ancient Egyptians had the Sphinx, a human-lion-falcon mashup akin to mythical Greco-Roman centaurs and fauns.

From Slate ● Feb. 14, 2022

On a technical level, are the fauns are the toughest creature makeup for the actors?

From The Verge ● Sep. 10, 2019

You can imagine its dancers as dragonflies, fauns, larks — though any such illusions or allusions come and go.

From New York Times ● Jan. 6, 2017

There is even one stitched with the silhouette of dancing fauns as tall as the skirt itself.

From "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black