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.

---

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

---

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

Here, though, all the dancers are the faun and their attention locks not on a nymph but on us.

From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2023

In front of them is a goat-legged faun.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 28, 2020

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

No faun would look so purposeful walking up to an armed group of Romans in the middle of the night.

From "The House of Hades" 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

The Fae folk — faeries, fauns, centaurs, trolls and such — are refugees from their war-torn homeland Tirnanoc, but they’ve found little welcome in the neo-Victorian steampunk city of The Burgue.

From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2019

A couple of fauns had apparently just been helping it out of its armor.

From "The Horse and His Boy" by C.S. Lewis