1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sylph

SYLPH, an imaginary spirit of the air; according to Paracelsus, the first modern writer who uses the word, an air-elemental, coming between material and immaterial beings. In current usage, the term is applied to a feminine spirit or fairy, and is often used in a figurative sense of a graceful, slender girl or young woman. The form of the word points to a Greek origin, and Aristotle's aiK4>i), a kind of beetle (Hist. anim. 8. 17. 8), has usually been taken as the source. Similarly, the earth-elementals or earth-spirits were in Paracelsus's nomenclature, "gnomes" (Gr. γνώμη, intelligence, γιγνώσκειν, to know) as being the spirits that gave the secrets of the earth to mortals. Littre, however, takes the word to be Old Celtic, and meaning " genius," and states that it occurs in such forms as sulfi, sylfi, &c, in inscriptions, or latinized as sulevae or suleviae.