Word
fairy
US/ˈfɛɹi/
UK/fˈeəɹi/
Definitions
01magical creature
n. a small, magical creature in stories that looks like a person and often has wings.
n. a mythical being of folklore and legend, typically depicted as having magical powers and a human-like form.
“The children believed that a fairy lived at the bottom of the garden.”
“Victorian illustrators often reimagined the fairy as a tiny, winged sprite, a departure from the more dangerous beings found in earlier Celtic folklore.”
03delicate or whimsical
adj. looking or feeling like a fairy; very light, delicate, or magical.
adj. resembling or characteristic of a fairy, particularly in terms of being fanciful, whimsical, or physically delicate.
“The dancer moved with a fairy grace that captivated the entire audience.”
“The morning frost had created fairy patterns on the windowpane, intricate and fragile enough to vanish at a single touch.”
Literary
Etymology
From Middle English faierie, fairie, from Old French faerie, from fae + -erie, from Latin fāta (“goddess of fate”). Equivalent to fay + -ry. Attested in English from about 1330, in King Alisaunder, first in the sense of "enchantment, illusion, dream" ("that thou herdest is fairye") and shortly thereafter "realm of the fays, fairy-land" and "the inhabitants of fairyland, collectively". The re-interpretation of the term as a countable noun denoting individual inhabitants of fairy-land can be traced to the 1390s, but became common only in the 16th century, perhaps due to reinterpreting phrases like faerie knight.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Collocations
Idioms
away with the fairies — Not all there; slightly crazy.
fairy money — Any money or treasure that a person discovers unexpectedly.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/fairy