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dryad

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.

dryad

 or hamadryad

In Greek mythology, tree nymphs. Dryads were originally the spirits of oak trees (drys: “oak”), but the name was later applied to all tree nymphs. They were nature spirits who took the form of beautiful young women, and it was believed that they lived only as long as the trees they inhabited.


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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
the tree at whose foot I lay had opened its rocky side, and in the cleft, like a long lily-bud sliding from its green sheath, stood a dryad, and my speech failed and my breath went as I looked upon her beauty, for which mortality has no simile.
With these she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood.
Why, it's a time and place when and where everything might come true--when the men in green might creep out to join hands and dance around the fire, or dryads steal from their trees to warm their white limbs, grown chilly in October frosts, by the blaze.
 
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