sylvans

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...

See all 12 meanings of sylvan