moss-woman
moss-woman noun: a female of the moss-folk.
Noun
moss-woman (plural moss-women)
- A female of the moss-folk.
- A peasant one time hearing the usual baying and cheering in a wood, would join in the cry. Next morning he found hanging at his stable-door a quarter of a green Moss-woman as his share of the game.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 231
- ‘A Moss-woman!’ the haymakers cry,
And over the fields in terror they fly.
She is loosely clad from neck to foot,
In a mantle of moss from the maple's root,
And like lichen grey on its stem that grows
Is the hair that over her mantle flows.1874, Archibald Maclaren, The Fairy Family, London: Macmilland and Co., page 32
Forms of moss-woman
| plural | moss-women |
|---|
Origin of moss-woman
Calque of German Moosweibchen.
Questions about moss-woman
- What does moss-woman mean?
- Moss-woman means a female of the moss-folk.
- What part of speech is moss-woman?
- Moss-woman is a noun.
- What is the plural of moss-woman?
- The plural of moss-woman is moss-women.
Words near moss-woman in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: moss-woman (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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