sylvan

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   relating to or characteristic of wooded regions

   A shady sylvan glade.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Sylvan, recorded from the mid-16th century, is a literary word derived from Latin silva, “wood,” the same Latin source from which savage ultimately derives.

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.

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