dryad
/ˈdɹaɪəd/
dryad noun: a female tree spirit; a woodnymph or tree nymph.
Noun
dryad (plural dryads)
- A female tree spirit; a woodnymph or tree nymph.
- No Dryads sought to avert the fate of their kindred trees - no Nereides sported on the waves.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 234
- There it had stood for years, close beside a mighty oak, under which sat often the kindly old priest, who told stories to the listening children. The young chestnut tree listened with them: the Dryad inside it, who was still a child, could remember the time when the tree was so small that it only...1914, Hans Christian Andersen, “The Dryad”, in William Alexander Craigie, transl., Fairy tales and other stories
- Any of the dryas plants, especially the plant mountain avens.
dryad meaning in Persian
dryad in Persian
- female tree spirit
- دریاد
Forms of dryad
| plural | dryads |
|---|
Origin of dryad
From Old French driade (“wood nymph”), from Latin Dryas, Dryadis, from Ancient Greek Δρυάς (Druás, “dryad”), from δρῦς (drûs, “oak”), from Proto-Indo-European *derew(o)- (“tree, wood”); cf. Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”).
Words formed from dryad
Words that rhyme with dryad
Questions about dryad
- What does dryad mean?
- Dryad means a female tree spirit; a woodnymph or tree nymph.
- What is dryad in Persian?
- Dryad in Persian is دریاد. See Dryad meaning in Persian.
- What part of speech is dryad?
- Dryad is a noun.
- How do you pronounce dryad?
- Dryad is pronounced /ˈdɹaɪəd/.
- What is the plural of dryad?
- The plural of dryad is dryads.
Words near dryad in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dryad (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Qwertygiy-dryad.wav.
Cite this entry: “dryad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dryad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.