sylvan
- Of, relating to, or characteristic of woods or forest; pleasantly rural and wooded.
- Also used as a noun to mean an inhabitant of the woods, such as a mythological woodland deity.
In a sentence
- The hiking trail wound through a sylvan landscape of ancient oaks and dappled sunlight.
- Keats evoked a sylvan world in his 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', imagining mysterious, leafy pursuits frozen in marble.
Usage note. Both spellings 'sylvan' and 'silvan' are correct; 'sylvan' is more common in modern English, following the classical Latin 'sylva' variant.
Where it comes from
English sylvan — “wooded, forest-like” · entered English 16th c.
From Latin 'silvanus' or 'sylvanus', an adjective meaning 'of the forest', derived from 'silva' (or 'sylva'), meaning 'wood' or 'forest'. Silvanus was also the name of the Roman god of forests. The word entered English in the late 16th century through literary Latin influence.