Kobold

Quick meaning: Kobold is a noun meaning (German folklore) A mischievous elf or goblin, or one connected (and helpful) to a family or household.

Meaning

(German folklore) A mischievous elf or goblin, or one connected (and helpful) to a family or household.

More Meanings

1. (fantasy literature) One of a diminutive and usually malevolent race of beings, often with a reptilian or dog-like appearance.
2. (German mythology) An ambivalent, sometimes vindictive, spirit that is capable of materialising as an object or human, often a child; a sprite.

Example Sentences

In Germany also the kobolds are rather troublesome than otherwise, to the miners, taking pleasure in frustrating their objects, and rendering their toil unfruitful.

a. 1867, George MacDonald, The Shadows, 2000 [1980], The Golden Key and Other Stories, page 96, The king had seen all kinds of gnomes, goblins, and kobolds at his coronation; […] .

Movers, in the first chapter of his Phönizier, says that that group of deities called Dactyls, Cabiri, Corybantes, and Cyclopes, were similar to those old Germanic divinities now known as Kobolds.

Among the nonhuman creatures that peopled rural Europe in the Middle Ages — the fairies, elves, dwarfs, trolls, and kobolds — there were beneficent female spirits who patronized those households that treated them well.

Word Forms

• kobolds
• kobolde

Synonyms for kobold

Depending on context, synonyms include goblin.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include kobald, kallikantzaros, demon, dwarf, boglet, tikoloshe.

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