hamadryad
Americannoun
plural
hamadryads, hamadryades-
Classical Mythology. a dryad who is the spirit of a particular tree.
noun
-
classical myth one of a class of nymphs, each of which inhabits a tree and dies with it
-
another name for king cobra
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“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
We have neither fay nor fairy, ghost nor bogle, satyr nor wood-nymph; our very forests disdain to shelter dryad or hamadryad.
From The Backwoods of Canada Being Letters From The Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America by Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland
The poet's hamadryad and naiad, what are they, indeed, but cobwebby fictions, which must be brushed away if ideal truth is to be revealed?
From The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years by Atkins, Elizabeth
However it may be, the Burman is not ready to kill the hamadryad.
From The Soul of a People by Fielding, H. (Harold)
To her companion she gleamed, as if a wood- thing, a hamadryad, had slipped out from the laurel-tree and come to dine with him in the dusk.
From Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories by Herrick, Robert
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.
