faun
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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.
Vocabulary lists containing faun
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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Ancient Rome: Mythology and Literature - Introductory
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A Mythical Menagerie
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Donatello delivers himself to justice, no longer the preternatural faun but a man of grave responsibility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
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
When the young man declares dully that the faun must be naked, Diaghilev gets the snappy comeback: “God in His infinite wisdom created tights and a dance belt.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2018
Like an ice cream cone on a warm summer day, his faun seems almost to melt into the stone on which he sprawls, drooping atop a limp animal skin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 13, 2017
Hazel had never been so glad to see the faun.
From "The Son of Neptune" 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
He has begun the long work of cataloging the statues who inhabit each room, classical-style representations of fauns, men fighting beasts, or children at play.
From Slate ● Sep. 10, 2020
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
He thought about the little girl Julia, the families with kids, his new friends in the Fifth Cohort, even those silly fauns.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
