Sylphs

To each of the four roots, or elements, into which the Greeks divided all matter, a particular spirit was later made to correspond. Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician, gave them their names: the Gnomes of earth, the Nymphs of water, the Salamanders of fire, and the Sylphs, or Sylphides, of air. All of these words come from the Greek. The French philologist Littré traced the etymology of ‘sylph’ to the Celtic languages, but it seems quite unlikely that Paracelsus, who gave us the name, knew anything about those tongues.

No one any longer believes in the Sylphs, but the word is used as a trivial compliment applied to a slender young woman. Sylphs occupy an intermediate place between supernatural and natural beings; Romantic poets and the ballet have not neglected them.