| 释义 |
sylphid, n. (a.)|ˈsɪlfɪd|
Also -ide.
[ad. F. sylphide (1671 in Littré), f. sylphe: see prec. and -id2.]
A little or young sylph.
1680A. L[ovell] tr. Montfaucon de Villars' Cnt. of Gabalis 67 As to marriage, I would advise you to take a sylphide. 1714Pope Rape Lock ii. 73 Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear! 1803H. K. White Clifton Grove 48 in Rem. (1807) II. 12 Hosts of Sylphids on the moon-beam sail. a1814Gonzanga v. i. in New Brit. Theatre III. 145 Let me catch my runaway sylphid by the leg, what a delightful scene of raillery I'll have with him. 1837Lytton E. Maltrav. iii. ii, Worse than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid, that never visits us but in visions. 1849Thackeray Pendennis xxxviii, Our little sylphide, who scarcely ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina. 1897Gunter Susan Turnbull xxi. 276 She bounds with the grace of a sylphide.
b. attrib. or as adj. = sylphic, sylphish.
1779Sylph I. 195 My connexion with the Sylphiad [sic] tribe. 1803J. Porter Thaddeus xxii, He ventured to look once only at her Sylphid figure. 1808Scott Marm. ii. Introd. 90 If to Sylphid Queen 'twere given, To show our earth the charms of Heaven, She could not glide along the air, With form more light. 1853E. S. Sheppard Ch. Auchester II. 204 If he were small and sylphid seated by his majestic mother, how tiny was that delicate satellite of his.
Hence ˈsylphidine a. (nonce-wd.), like a sylphid.
1885Meredith Diana xiii, She swam above them in a cocoon of her spinning, sylphidine, unseizable. |