Sylph (also called sylphid) is a mythological spirit of the air. The term originates in the 16th century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air.

Since the term sylph itself originates with Paracelsus, there is relatively little pre-Paracelsian legend and mythology that can be confidently associated with it, but a significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by the idea. Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles."

Etymology

The word is possibly a portmanteau from Latin sylvestris and nympha,sylvestris being a common synonym for sylph in Paracelsus. Anthon and Trollope note a similar usage in the Aeneid, where silvestris is taken as an elliptical form of nympha silvestris ("forest nymph"). Jacob Grimm uses this phrase as a gloss for the Anglo-Saxon wudu-mær (roughly equivalent to "woodmare"), which he also takes as a metaphorical name for an echo.Jan Baptist van Helmont, a near contemporary of Paracelsus and coiner of the word "gas," uses sylvestris in the sense of "wild" to describe gaseous emissions, which may be connected to the Paracelsian usage. Thorpe's Northern Mythology connects the adjective sylvestres and the related silvaticas to European wild man legends. A related idea is that "sylph" is from a hyper-urbane respelling of a Latin neologism silves, but in either case this connection to the Latin root silva ("forest") is supported by Paracelsus' use of sylphes as a synonym for schrötlein, a German word for a tree spirit or especially an earth spirit in his Liber de Sanguine ultra Mortem.

The Elementals are a fictional team of superheroes published by DC Comics. They first appeared in Super Friends #14 (October 1978), and were created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon.

Team history

The Elementals first appear inside four giant translucent jewels located in four different cities: a ruby appeared near the Gotham City Police Department's central station, an emerald appeared atop Metropolis' Galaxy Communications Building, a diamond appeared outside New York City's United Nations building, and a sapphire appeared on a beach near the Aquacave, Aquaman's headquarters.

Superman fought a hooded man in brown who called himself the Gnome. Aquaman fought a woman in a green fishlike costume who called herself the Undine. Elsewhere Wonder Woman fought a blonde woman in blue who called herself the Sylph. Additionally, Batman fought a fiery woman in a red reptilian costume who called herself the Salamander. Strangely, their costumes proved to be ill-fitted for their powers; despite this, the Elementals put the heroes in grave danger.

Sylph (シルフ, Shirufu) is a Japanese shōjo manga magazine published by ASCII Media Works (formerly MediaWorks) and is sold monthly. The magazine was originally published on December 9, 2006 as a special edition version of MediaWorks' now-defunct Dengeki Comic Gao! under the title Comic Sylph (コミックシルフ, Komikku Shirufu, normally written as comic SYLPH) as a quarterly publication. On March 21, 2008, with the release of the sixth volume, the magazine was transferred over as a special edition version of ASCII Media Works' shōnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh. On May 22, 2008, the magazine became independent of Dengeki Daioh and was published as volume one of Sylph as the July 2008 issue as a bimonthly publication. On May 22, 2010, the magazine started to be published monthly. Sylph is one of the few magazines originally published by MediaWorks not under the Dengeki naming line, such as with Dengeki Daioh, and Dengeki G's Magazine, the first of which being Active Japan in 1995 which has been discontinued since 1998.