Sylva
/ˈsɪl.və/noun
A poetic or literary word for a forest or wooded region; also a title used for a miscellaneous collection of writings.
Did you know?The Latin plural silvae became the title of Statius’s Silvae, a celebrated collection of poems, helping give the word its secondary sense of a varied literary compilation.
Etymological Timeline
Classical Latin
Latin
silva
“Forest, woodland, or uncultivated wooded land”
1st Century CE
Latin
Silvae
“The title of Statius’s miscellaneous collection of occasional poems”
Late Latin
Latin
silva
“A wood or forest; also, figuratively, a collection or mass of material”
Renaissance Latin
Neo-Latin
sylva
“A learned spelling using y, often evoking Greek-influenced literary or scholarly style”
17th Century
English
sylva
“A poetic or literary term for a forest”
Modern English
English
sylva
“A forest or wooded region, chiefly in literary, botanical, and proper-name usage”
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