NYMPHS, in Greek mythology, the generic name of a large number of female divinities of inferior rank. The word, the etymology of which is uncertain, seems to mean simply a mar riageable woman ; this is appropriate, as they are mostly asso ciated with fertile, growing things (as trees), or with water. They are frequently associated with the superior divinities, as Artemis, Apollo, Dionysus, Pan and Hermes (q.v.).
The nymphs were distinguished according to the different spheres of nature with which they were connected. Sea nymphs were Oceanids or Nereids, daughters of Oceanus or Nereus. Naiades (from Gr.. yaw', flow, cf. vii,aa, stream) presided over springs, rivers and lakes. Oreades (dpos, mountain) were nymphs of mountains and grottoes, one of the most famous of whom was Echo. NaPaeae (vain, dell) and Alseides (acros, grove) were nymphs of glens and groves. Dryades (q.v.) or Hama dryades were nymphs of forests and trees.
In Italy they tended to be identified with native divinities of springs and streams (Iuturna, Egeria, Carmentis, Fons), while the Lymphae (originally Lumpae), Italian water-goddesses, ow ing to the accidental similarity of name, were identified with the Greek Nymphae.
This letter, the fourth vowel of the modern al phabet, corresponds to the Semitic ayin, which represented not a vowel but a breathing. The Greeks, or possibly their Asianic predecessors, in adapting the Semitic alphabet to their own use used this letter (omicron) to express the vowel 0, as was the case also with the letters aleph, he, cheth and yodh. Vowels were not expressed alphabetically in Semitic. The form of the letter on the Moabite stone was small, 0, and this small form appears in early Greek inscriptions from Thera and Corinth. In Corinth and in the inscriptions from Abu-Simbel in Egypt there is a form 0. A form with a dot in the centre occurs in Thera, o, and this is paralleled in the large Etruscan 0. At Miletus a form 0 occurs. The Latin form, taken from the Chalcidic or Etruscan, was 0. The minuscule form retains the shape of the majuscule letter.
vowel, whether open or close. In the east it was used only for the open vowel, ov being used for the long close vowel as well as for the true diphthong. In the Cyclades however a reversal of this process frequently took place, f2 being used for the close sound whether long or short, 0 for the open. In Latin the letter stood for the same vowel without distinction of length, and the sound has passed almost unchanged into the Romance languages.
In modern English the vowel has undergone changes. The long a has become a diphthong (ou) as in the words bone, rose. Short a has become more open and lower, as in rob. Before the con sonant r the sound is rounded and pronounced very far back in the mouth, e.g., glory, north. In the word do the single letter is used where a more usual orthography would require its doubling. Again in the word son one would expect the vowel u. In words such as word, work, world the sound has been affected by the preceding bilabial. The short sound is the descendant of Middle English short o in which both the close and open short o, which were distinguished in Old English, met. The long a, now a diph thong, descends from Middle English long (3, an open sound, which was derived from Old English long a. In Middle English this was a rounded back vowel akin to the modern vowel in the words shore, north. Old English close long o became in Middle English oo (B. F. C. A.) OAK, the name given to trees and shrubs of the botanical genus Quercus of the beech family (Fagaceae, q.v.), a large group which includes some of the most important timber trees. The oaks are widely distributed over the temperate parts of Europe, Asia, northern Africa and North America, and extend southward in mountains and highlands into the Tropics. On the mountains of Europe and North America they grow only at moderate eleva tions and none approach the arctic circle. The tendency of many species to vary in a marked degree and the existence of numerous hybrid forms makes the determination of the exact number of species difficult, but it is estimated at from about 30o to upwards of 500.