hamadryad
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- noun In Greek myth, a wood-nymph believed to live and die with the tree to which she was attached.
- noun In entomology: A dryad or wood-nymph, a butterfly of the old genus Hamadryas.
- noun In herpetology, a large, hooded, venomous Indian serpent, Naja hamadryas or Hamadryas elaps, now Ophiophagus elaps. It is related to the cobra.
- noun In mammalogy, a large Abyssinian baboon, Cynocephalus hamadryas, with long mane and whiskers and tufted tail.
Examples
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Not only does it happen in poetry, but common people often go farther than the poet and begin believing in the hamadryad in the wood or the spirit of the waters.
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In the pale, elusive moonlight, and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.
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There was about Hazlitt's wooing of Rachel the pathos which might distinguish the love affair of a Baptist angel and the hamadryad daughter of a Babayaga.
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Any face might look out from that mist, any white feet of nymph or hamadryad pass among the glimmering aisles; in the dim, lilac-tinted distance it may be that Merlin still sleeps in his vaporous magic circle.
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This hamadryad was destined in the outcome to dwindle into a village housewife, she would have taken a lively interest in the number of eggs the hens were laying, she would even have assured her children, precisely in the way her father spoke of John Hughes, that young people ordinarily have foolish fancies which their rational elders agree to disregard.
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But when they raised her from the floor they discovered the real cause of her death, for a second hamadryad, which had been concealed by her skirts, darted noiselessly under the bed.
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The hamadryad, as you probably know, is perhaps the deadliest of all Eastern reptiles.
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The Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, is exclusively a snake-eater.
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I am fond of verdure; I like trees as well as men: every oak for me has its hamadryad informing it, I like flowers better than men; and the most beautiful flower I know is a girl, I have a sweetheart in the Bargello, as you shall hear.
Earthwork out of Tuscany Being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett
Note
The word 'hamadryad' comes from Greek roots meaning 'together' and 'tree'.
