Definitions

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

  • noun A small, often mischievous creature considered to have magical powers.
  • noun A lively, mischievous child.
  • noun A usually sprightly or mischievous or sometimes spiteful person.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To entangle intricately, as the hair.
  • noun An imaginary being superstitiously supposed to inhabit unfrequented places, and in various ways to affect mankind; a sprite; a fairy; a goblin.
  • noun A mischievous or wicked person; a knave; a rogue.
  • noun A diminutive person; a dwarf; hence, a pet name for a child, especially one who is very sprightly and graceful.

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

  • noun An imaginary supernatural being, commonly a little sprite, much like a fairy; a mythological diminutive spirit, supposed to haunt hills and wild places, and generally represented as delighting in mischievous tricks.
  • noun A very diminutive person; a dwarf.
  • noun a flint arrowhead; -- so called by the English rural folk who often find these objects of prehistoric make in the fields and formerly attributed them to fairies; -- called also elf bolt, elf dart, and elf shot.
  • noun a child supposed to be left by elves, in room of one they had stolen. See Changeling.
  • noun the ignis fatuus.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a small owl (Micrathene Whitneyi) of Southern California and Arizona.
  • transitive verb To entangle mischievously, as an elf might do.

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

  • noun A mythical, supernatural being resembling but seen as distinct from humans.
  • noun Norse mythology A luminous spirit presiding over nature and fertility and dwelling in the world of Álfheim (Elfland). Compare angel, nymph, fairy.
  • noun fantasy Any of the magical, humanoid, typically forest-guarding races bearing some similarities to the Norse álfar (through Tolkien's Eldar).

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

  • noun (folklore) fairies that are somewhat mischievous
  • noun below 3 kilohertz

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English ælf; see albho- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English ælf ("incubus, elf"), from Proto-Germanic *albiz.

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