hamadryad
Americannoun
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Classical Mythology. a dryad who is the spirit of a particular tree.
noun
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classical myth one of a class of nymphs, each of which inhabits a tree and dies with it
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another name for king cobra
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of hamadryad
< Latin, stem of Hamādryas wood nymph < Greek, equivalent to hama together with (cognate with same ) + dryás dryad
Vocabulary lists containing hamadryad
Example Sentences
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“A hamadryad is a wood-nymph, also a poisonous snake in India, and an Abyssinian baboon,” Hermes points out.
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2010
He tried to reconstruct from the victim of three-and-sixty years the pink-slippered hamadryad who had haunted him all his life.
From The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 by Hughes, Rupert
One afternoon, while she was out at tea with some friends, the Malay gardener brought to the house the carcass of a hamadryad which he had killed in the garden.
From Where the Strange Trails Go Down Sulu, Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Cambodia, Annam, Cochin-China by Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
Practical men are not so scarce, one would think, and I am not sure that the tree was a gainer when the hamadryad flitted and left it nothing but ship-timber.
From Among My Books Second Series by Lowell, James Russell
A couple of years ago I was informed of a case where one of these king-snakes was put into an enclosure with an Indian snake- eating cobra or hamadryad of about the same size.
From Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Roosevelt, Theodore
In entire consistence with botany, geology, science, or what not, he endues his very seas and woods with passion, more than the old hamadryads or tritons.
From The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: Pepacton by Burroughs, John
I have just sent people to Abyssinia to fetch me some big silver-gray lion-monkeys, sometimes called hamadryads.
From McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1 by Various
At first Jurgen could not believe her, but presently Jurgen was convinced, through at least two of his senses, that what Chloris told him was true about hamadryads.
From Jurgen A Comedy of Justice by Cabell, James Branch
Walking through the woods he almost expects to catch glimpses of hamadryads peering from their trees, nymphs rising from the fountains, and startled fauns with shaggy skins and cloven feet scurrying away among the bushes.
From A History of English Literature by Fletcher, Robert Huntington
It was thus that the ancients believed that the dryads, hamadryads, satyrs, pans, nereids, watched over the fountains, forests, and seas, attributing to each force in nature a presiding divinity.
From De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera by MacNutt, Francis Augustus
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.
