naiad

n. water nymph (Greek Mythology); dragonfly larva (Zoology); expert female swimmer; plant that grows under the water (Botany)

In Greek mythology, the Naiads (from the Greek νάειν, "to flow," and νἃμα, "running water") were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as river gods embodied rivers, and some very ancient spirits inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean Lerna in the Argolid. Naiads were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater and the Nereids specifically with the Mediterranean; but because the Greeks thought of the world's waters as all one system, which percolated in from the sea in deep cavernous spaces within the bosom of the earth, to rise freshened in seeps and springs, there was some overlap. Arethusa, the nymph of a spring, could make her way through subterranean flows from the Peloponnesus, to surface on the island of Sicily. In his Dionisiaca, (XVI.356; XXIV.123) Nonnus gave the naiads the nonce-name Hydriades ("water ladies"). Otherwise, the essence of a naiad was bound to her spring. If a naiad's body of water dried, she died. Though Walter Burkert points out, "When in the Iliad [xx.4–9] Zeus calls the gods into assembly on Mount Olympus, it is not only the well-known Olympians who come along, but also all the nymphs and all the rivers; Okeanos alone remains at his station," (Burkert 1985), Greek hearers recognized this impossibility as the poet's hyperbole, which proclaimed the universal power of Zeus over the ancient natural world: "the worship of these deities," Burkert confirms, "is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality."
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Noun
1. submerged aquatic plant having narrow leaves and small flowers; of fresh or brackish water
(synonym) water nymph
(hypernym) aquatic plant, water plant, hydrophyte, hydrophytic plant
(member-holonym) Naias, genus Naias, Najas, genus Najas
2. (Greek mythology) a nymph of lakes and springs and rivers and fountains
(hypernym) water nymph
(classification) Greek mythology

(n.)
One of a group of butterflies. See Nymph.
  

(n.)
Any species of a tribe (Naiades) of freshwater bivalves, including Unio, Anodonta, and numerous allied genera; a river mussel.
  

(n.)
Any plant of the order Naiadaceae, such as eelgrass, pondweed, etc.
  

(n.)
A water nymph; one of the lower female divinities, fabled to preside over some body of fresh water, as a lake, river, brook, or fountain.
  

nadia diana