elfin
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From Middle English elven, from Old English elfen, ælfen (“nymph, spirit, fairy”), feminine of elf, ælf (“elf”), equivalent to elf + -in. Cognate with Middle High German elbinne (“a fairy, nymph”).
Base: elf
Affixes: -in
Inflected forms:
form: elfins
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: more elfin
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most elfin
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: An elf; an inhabitant of fairy-land.
pos: noun
examples: It was quite an expedition that Ida met, a kind of elfin's rout it looked in the moonlight, children and animals and a fairy-like presence with a face like a moon-lily, all scampering and squealing and whoofing and miauling in a merry game they were making of their progress.
gloss: A little urchin or child.
pos: noun
gloss: Any of the butterflies in the subgenus Incisalia of the North American lycaenid genus Callophrys.
pos: noun
gloss: Of or relating to elves.
pos: adj
examples: The Elf-bolt is associated with many rustic fancies not yet altogether eradicated from the popular mind. It occupied no unimportant part among the paraphernalia of Scottish witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the occurrence of any sudden disease amongst cattle was ascribed until a comparatively recent period, to their having been shot by the fairies with Elfin arrows.
If Burd Ellen had gone “widishins" round the church, she would, I think, have used the best homoeopathic specific against the Elf-King's power; for "to go widishins" was the chief element in elfin practices, and if mortals wished to resist or unspell elf-craft, they, too, had "to go widershins," or they had to repeat the Paternoster backwards, which came to the same thing, or do something else contrariwise.
gloss: Resembling an elf or elves, especially in tiny size or features.
pos: adj
examples: She was one of those elfin, rather precocious little girls, quick coloured, with dark hair, naturally curling dusky hair that was sometimes astray over her eyes, and eyes that were sometimes impishly dark, and sometimes a clear brown yellow.
Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.
He’s forced to travel back to 1969 to prevent an evil alien (a shockingly effective, nearly unrecognizable Jemaine Clement of Flight Of The Conchords, playing sort of a psychotic extraterrestrial-biker serial killer) from destroying the world by killing Brolin. Smith is aided in his quest by an elfin, time-jumping alien with psychic powers played by another Coen brothers veteran, A Serious Man star Michael Stuhlbarg.
Nhung Ngo had nearly the shortest legs at Site-43. She was one of the shortest members of staff, though seven inches above beneath the positively elfin Delfina Ibanez, and yet Lillian found her inexplicably difficult to shake.
I first met Demis Hassabis, the remarkable human, in the mid-2010s: an elfin figure with dark hair falling forward toward angular eyebrows, his face framed by standard-issue spectacles.
Synonyms: list in elven
Derived words: elfinfolk
elfin myzomela
elfin saddle
elfin safety
elfinwood
elfin wood
Williams elfin facies syndrome
Translations: