Word.ws English Dictionary

sylvan

Syllables: syl·vanUK/ˈsɪl.vən/

sylvan adjective: pertaining to the forest, or woodlands.

sylvan: pertaining to the forest, or woodlands
Image: Nicholas A. Tonelli from Northeast Pennsylvania, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

sylvan (comparative more sylvan, superlative most sylvan)

  1. Pertaining to the forest, or woodlands.
    • Broke by the jutting Land, on either ſide: / In double Streams the briny Waters glide. / Betwixt two rows of Rocks, a Sylvan Scene / Appears above, and Groves for ever green: […]1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 208, lines...
    • A little cabinet stood beside, with some of its shuttles and drawers open, displaying hawks-bells, dog-whistles, instruments for trimming a falcon's feathers, bridle-bits of various constructions, and other trifles connected with sylvan sport.1826, [Walter Scott], chapter III, in Woodstock; Or, The Cavalier. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and...
  2. Residing in a forest or wood.
    • Now, my Sacontalá, you are becomingly decorated: put on this lower veſt, the gift of ſylvan goddeſſes.1790, Cálidás [i.e., Kālidāsa]; [William Jones, transl.], Sacontalá; or, The Fatal Ring: An Indian Drama. By Cálidás. Translated from the Original Sanscrit and Prácrit, London: Printed for Edwards...
    Synonyms:
    forestlike, foresty
  3. Wooded, or covered in forest.
    • Nicolet Area Technical College, a Rhinelander green centerpiece, gets high marks not just for its management of more than two hundred acres of sylvan land and its thousand feet of frontage along the pristine shores of Lake Julia, but for being Wisconsin's college campus leader in renewable energy...2011, Pat[ricia J.] Dillon, Lynne [Smith] Diebel, “Enter, Northwoods: Rhinelander Area”, in Green Travel Guide to Northern Wisconsin: Environmentally and Socially Responsible Travel, Madison, Wis....
    • This house in McLean, Va., has just about everything a nature lover desires: soothing sounds of the Potomac River, a sylvan setting with countless species of birds and other wildlife, access to hiking, fishing and canoeing — and all within a half-hour of downtown Washington and minutes from the...2021 November 12, Kathy Orton, “Nature lovers house in McLean, Va., for sale for $7 million”, in Washington Post
    Synonyms:
    grovy

Noun

sylvan (plural sylvans)

  1. One who resides in the woods.
    • [H]e hurried to a masquerade-warehouse in Westminster, where he selected the garb of a sylvan, or a man of the woods, together with a guitar, which he entrusted to a porter, bidding him accompany then to St. James's Park. / "But what connexion is there between a sylvan and a French song accompanied...1826, [Horace Smith], chapter III, in Brambletye House; or, Cavaliers and Roundheads. A Novel. … In Three Volumes, volume II, Boston, Mass.: Wells and Lilly—State Street, →OCLC, pages 80–81
  2. A fabled deity of the wood; a faun, a satyr.
    • And ſeeing it is ſo generall a report, and ſo many auerre it eyther from their owne triall or from others, that are of indubitable honeſtie and credite, that the Syluanes and Fawnes, commonly called Incubi, haue often iniured women, deſiring and acting carnally with them: […]1610, Saint Augustine, “Whether It be Credible that the Angels being of an Incorporeall Nature, should Lust after the Women of the Earth, and Marrying Them, Beget Gyants of Them. Chap. 23.”, in...
    • 214. A Revel and Sacrifice to Pan. The frequent repetition of these subjects shows how deeply the artist's mind was imbued with the love of sylvan rites and ceremonies, characteristic of the fabled golden age, when "In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan." […] [N]ear to her are a nymph and a...1837, John Smith, “The Works of Nicolas Poussin”, in A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters; in which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the...

Proper noun capitalized: Sylvan

Sylvan (countable and uncountable, plural Sylvans)

  1. A surname.
  2. A community in North Middlesex municipality, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada.
  3. A ghost town in Panther Creek Township, Cass County, Illinois, United States.
  4. A township in Osceola County, Michigan, United States.
  5. A township in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
  6. A township in Cass County, Minnesota, United States, named after Sylvan Lake.
  7. A town and unincorporated community therein, in Richland County, Wisconsin, United States.

sylvan meaning in Tamil and Kannada

sylvan in Tamil

வனவாசி, கானகநாடன், வனதேவதை, காடுறை தெய்வம், காட்டேறி

sylvan in Kannada

ಮರದ

Examples of sylvan in a sentence

  • The particular trees may have been cut down long ago and forgotten; but the name survives to perpetuate its sylvan history.1886, Francis George Heath, “Sylvan Nomenclature”, in Sylvan Winter, London: Kegan Paul Trench, & Co., 1, Paternoster Square, →OCLC, page...
  • Over the course of the nineteenth century, an entity known as the 'German forest' arose out of Central Europe's sylvan diversity.2002, Jeffrey K. Wilson, “Introduction”, in The German Forest: Nature, Identity, and the Contestation of a National Symbol, 1871–1914...
  • The sylvans who guarded the palace were bearded buffoons, lazy and stupid but fierce.1976, Jane Krier, The English Masque: Vanished Court Drama (unpublished M.A. dissertation), Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, →OCLC...

Synonyms of sylvan

Forms of sylvan

Adjective
comparativemore sylvan
superlativemost sylvan
alternative formsilvan
Noun
pluralsylvans
Proper noun
pluralSylvans

Origin of sylvan

Borrowed from Medieval Latin sylvanus, possibly via Middle French sylvain, from Latin silvanus, cognate with Latin Silvānus (“Roman god of the woods”), from silva (“forest”), from Proto-Indo-European *sel-, *swel- (“beam, board, frame, threshold”). The ⟨y⟩ in sylvanus and its descendants is due to influence from Ancient Greek ῡ̔́λη (hū́lē, “wood, matter”), transliterated in the Latin style as hyle. Analysable as sylva (“silva”) + -an.

An altered form of French Sylvain, or borrowed from Swedish Sylvan.

Words formed from sylvan

Questions about sylvan

What does sylvan mean?
Sylvan means pertaining to the forest, or woodlands.
What is sylvan in Tamil?
Sylvan in Tamil is வனவாசி, கானகநாடன், வனதேவதை. See Sylvan meaning in Tamil.
How do you use sylvan in a sentence?
The particular trees may have been cut down long ago and forgotten; but the name survives to perpetuate its sylvan history.
What part of speech is sylvan?
Sylvan can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sylvan?
Sylvan is pronounced /ˈsɪl.vən/ (UK).

Words near sylvan in the dictionary

  1. Syltian
  2. syluer
  3. sylva
  4. sylvacrol
  5. sylvae
  6. sylvan
  7. Sylvanas
  8. sylvaner
  9. sylvaners
  10. sylvanesque
  11. Sylvania

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sylvan (page history and authors); Sylvan (page history and authors); sylvan (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sylvan (Kannada Wiktionary) (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-us-sylvan.ogg.

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