faun

American

[fawn] / fɔn /

noun

Classical Mythology.

one of a class of rural deities represented as men with the ears, horns, tail, and later also the hind legs of a goat.

faun British

/ fɔːn /

noun

(in Roman legend) a rural deity represented as a man with a goat's ears, horns, tail, and hind legs

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

faunlike adjective

Etymology

Origin of faun

1325–75; Middle English (< Old French faune ) < Latin faunus; Faunus

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Donatello delivers himself to justice, no longer the preternatural faun but a man of grave responsibility.

From The Wall Street Journal

Here, though, all the dancers are the faun and their attention locks not on a nymph but on us.

From New York Times

“The certificate is a fake, ditto the signature, ditto the spelling, ditto the drawing,” she told The New York Times in reference to one of the works, a drawing of a faun.

From New York Times

But little actually felt contemporary in this lollipops program of swans and fauns that, musically at least, might have been one of those old-timey Hollywood Bowl “Rhapsody Under the Stars.”

From Los Angeles Times

The deer were fauns who bowed to her over their hooves.

From Literature

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023