Word.ws English Dictionary

nereid

Syllables: ne·reid/ˈnɪəɹiɪd/

nereid noun: a youthful and pretty bather. Also the alternative letter-case form of Nereid.

Noun (1)

nereid (plural nereids or nereides)

  1. (figuratively) A youthful and pretty bather.
    • I knew in the back of my mind that the “nereid” wore a bikini intended for photography and that she lived in that bikini all summer.2014, John R. Stilgoe, Old Fields: Photography, Glamour, and Fantasy Landscape

Noun (2) capitalized: Nereid

Nereid (plural Nereids or Nereides)

  1. (Greek) Any one of the fifty sea-nymphs who were daughters of the sea-god Nereus and attendants upon Poseidon (Neptune), and were represented as riding on sea horses, sometimes in human form and sometimes with the tail of a fish.
    • 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

Proper noun capitalized: Nereid

Nereid

  1. One of the satellites of the planet Neptune.

Also used as

nereid is also the alternative letter-case form of Nereid.

nereid is also the alternative form of nereidid.

Synonyms of nereid

Forms of nereid

pluralnereids
pluralnereides
pluralNereids
pluralNereides
alternative formnereid
alternative form (archaic)Nereide
alternative form (archaic)Nereïde

Origin of nereid

See Nereid.

See nereidid.

From the stem of Latin Nērēis, from Ancient Greek Νηρηΐς (Nērēḯs), from Νηρεύς (Nēreús, “Nereus”) + -ις (-is), literally “sprung of Nereus”. By surface analysis, Nereus + -id.

Words formed from nereid

Questions about nereid

What does nereid mean?
Nereid means a youthful and pretty bather.
What part of speech is nereid?
Nereid can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce nereid?
Nereid is pronounced /ˈnɪəɹiɪd/.
What is the plural of nereid?
The plural of nereid is nereids.

Words near nereid in the dictionary

  1. nerdspeak
  2. nerdtastic
  3. nerdvana
  4. nerdwear
  5. nerdy
  6. nereid
  7. Nereidean
  8. nereides
  9. nereidian
  10. nereidians
  11. nereidid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nereid (page history and authors); Nereid (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-Nereid.wav.

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