Dictionary

moss-woman en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of German Moosweibchen.

Meanings

1. (Germanic) A female of the moss-folk.
   • A peasant one time hearing the usual baying and cheering in a wood, would join in the cry. Next morning he found hanging at his stable-door a quarter of a green Moss-woman as his share of the game. 1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 231:
   • ‘A Moss-woman!’ the haymakers cry, And over the fields in terror they fly. She is loosely clad from neck to foot, In a mantle of moss from the maple's root, And like lichen grey on its stem that grows Is the hair that over her mantle flows. 1874, Archibald Maclaren, The Fairy Family, London: Macmilland and Co., page 32:

Forms