Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A member of the Girl Scouts from six through eight years of age.
  • noun A bar of moist, usually chocolate cake, often with nuts.
  • noun A small sprite thought to do helpful work at night.
  • noun A brown trout.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Scotland, a spirit supposed to haunt houses, particularly farm-houses.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Scot. An imaginary good-natured spirit, who was supposed often to perform important services around the house by night, such as thrashing, churning, sweeping.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small square piece of rich cake, usually made with chocolate.
  • noun folklore A mythical creature, a helpful elf who would do people′s housework for them.
  • noun paganism A household spirit or revered ancestor.
  • noun Australia, New Zealand (colloquial) A tall, long-necked beer bottle, made from brown coloured glass.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (folklore) fairies that are somewhat mischievous
  • noun square or bar of very rich chocolate cake usually with nuts
  • noun a junior Girl Scout

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Sense 3, from the notion of the sprite as a tiny brown man.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From brown +‎ -ie (“diminutive suffix”).

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