Word.ws English Dictionary

green fairy

green fairy noun: absinthe liquor.

Noun

green fairy (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) Absinthe liquor.
    • Absinthe ads like to trade on artists like Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, as if the history of the green fairy began in the Pigalle neighborhood of 1870s Paris, but wormwood-infused drinks have been around for thousands of years.2010, Paul Owens, Paul Nathan, The Little Green Book of Absinthe, Penguin, →ISBN
  2. (New Zealand, colloquial) A person who supplies medicinal cannabis products illegally.
    • She used to buy the majority of her medicines from a local green fairy, but when they were busted, her supply line, like that of many other patients, was cut.2020, James Borrowdale, Weed: A New Zealand Story, Penguin Random House New Zealand, →ISBN

Origin of green fairy

Calque of French fée verte.

Questions about green fairy

What does green fairy mean?
Green fairy means absinthe liquor.
What part of speech is green fairy?
Green fairy is a noun.

Words near green fairy in the dictionary

  1. green ephedras
  2. Green Erin
  3. green eyeshade
  4. green eyeshades
  5. Green Fairfield
  6. green fairy
  7. green fallow
  8. green fallows
  9. green fat
  10. green fever
  11. green fevers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: green fairy (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-green fairy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “green fairy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/green_fairy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.