nymph

Any of numerous minor deities represented as beautiful maidens inhabiting and sometimes personifying features of nature such as trees, waters, and mountains.

A sexually mature and attractive young woman.

The immature form of an insect, such as a grasshopper, that does not pass through a pupal stage during metamorphosis. Nymphs resemble adults but are smaller and lack fully developed wings.

The eight-legged immature form of certain arachnids, such as ticks and mites.

In insects which undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, the stage in which the wing-pads appear.

In mythology, one of a numerous class of inferior divinities, imagined as beautiful maidens, eternally young, who were considered as tutelary spirits of certain localities and objects, or of certain races and families, and whose existence depended upon that of the things with which they were identified.

Hence, a young and attractive woman; a maiden; a damsel.

In entomology, the third stage of an insect’s transformation, intervening between the larva and the imago; a pupa; a chrysalis; a nympha. See cuts under Termes and Nysius.

A goddess of the mountains, forests, meadows, or waters.