sb. (a.) Also -ide. [ad. F. sylphide (1671 in Littré), f. sylphe: see prec. and -ID2.] A little or young sylph.
1680. A. L[ovell], trans. Montfaucon de Villars’ Cnt. of Gabalis, 67. As to marriage, I would advise you to take a sylphide.
1714. Pope, Rape Lock, II. 73. Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear!
1803. H. K. White, Clifton Grove, 47.
| The ghosts of Ossian skim the misty vale, | |
| And hosts of Sylphids on the Moon-beam sail. |
a. 1814. Gonzanga, V. i., in New Brit. Theatre, III. 145. Let me catch my runaway sylphid by the leg, what a delightful scene of raillery I’ll have with him.
1837. Lytton, E. Maltrav., III. ii. Worse than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid, that never visits us but in visions.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, xxxviii. Our little sylphide, who scarcely ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina.
1897. Gunter, Susan Turnbull, xxi. 276. She bounds with the grace of a sylphide.
b. attrib. or as adj. = SYLPHIC, SYLPHISH.
1779. Sylph, I. 195. My connexion with the Sylphiad [sic] tribe.
1803. Jane Porter, Thaddeus, xxii. He ventured to look once only at her Sylphid figure.
1808. Scott, Marm., II. Introd. 90. If to Sylphid Queen ’twere given, To show our earth the charms of Heaven, She could not glide along the air, With form more light.
1853. Miss E. S. Sheppard, Ch. Auchester, II. ix. 204–5. If he were small and sylphid, seated by his majestic mother, how tiny was that delicate satellite of his.
Hence Sylphidine a. (nonce-wd.), like a sylphid.
1885. Meredith, Diana, xiii. She swam above them in a cocoon of her spinning, sylphidine, unseizable.
