NAIAD (naiades)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: naiades   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does naiad mean? 

• NAIAD (noun)
  The noun NAIAD has 2 senses:

1. submerged aquatic plant having narrow leaves and small flowers; of fresh or brackish water

2. (Greek mythology) a nymph of lakes and springs and rivers and fountains

  Familiarity information: NAIAD used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NAIAD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Submerged aquatic plant having narrow leaves and small flowers; of fresh or brackish water

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

naiad; water nymph

Hypernyms ("naiad" is a kind of...):

aquatic plant; hydrophyte; hydrophytic plant; water plant (a plant that grows partly or wholly in water whether rooted in the mud, as a lotus, or floating without anchorage, as the water hyacinth)

Holonyms ("naiad" is a member of...):

genus Naias; genus Najas; Naias; Najas (sole genus of the family Naiadaceae)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(Greek mythology) a nymph of lakes and springs and rivers and fountains

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("naiad" is a kind of...):

water nymph ((Greek mythology) any nymph of the water)

Domain category:

Greek mythology (the mythology of the ancient Greeks)

 Context examples 

Naiad and Thalassa are small and shaped like Tic Tacs, spanning only about 60 miles (100 kilometers) in length.

(NASA Finds Neptune Moons Locked in 'Dance of Avoidance', NASA)

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)