kobold

plural kobolds · plural rare kobolde · alternative cobold

1. Germanhuman sciencesAn ambivalent, sometimes vindictive, spirit that is capable of materialising as an object or human, often a child; a sprite.

   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.

   2009, Robert Grant Haliburton, The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas: Collected Papers on the Curious Anthropology of Robert Grant Haliburton, page 75

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   1904, Andrew Lang (collector), author and translator not identified, The Mermaid and the Boy, The Brown Fairy Book, page 176, At this point a cock crew, and the youth jumped up hastily saying : 'Of course I shall ride with the king to the war, and if I do not return, take your violin every evening to the seashore and play on it, so that the very sea-kobolds who live at the bottom of the ocean may hear it and come to you.'

2. GermanartsA mischievous elf or goblin, or one connected (and helpful) to a family or household.

   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; […] .

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   When the Kobold is about coming into any place, he first, in this way, makes trial of the disposition of the family.

   1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 41

   On the other hand, the kobolds, brownies, and other household sprites who are not merely benign, but helpful, if well treated; the elf-maids who marry mortals, the swan-maidens, and the like, bear the stamp of Teutonic fancy.

   1883 June 16, The Academy, London, page 416, column 1

   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.

   1977, James Buchanan Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England, published 2007, page 138

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

   2011, William Wirt Sikes, Varla Ventura, The Occult Powers of Goats and Other Welsh Tales of Goblins, Fairies, Gnomes, and Elves, unnumbered page

   Synonyms: goblin

3. fantasyOne of a diminutive and usually malevolent race of beings, often with a reptilian or dog-like appearance.

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   There were also various trolls like great smiling badgers, brownies darting about laughing, dwarves with large gray heads, sensuous mermaids, stony kobolds, green gnomes, sirens and many elves, who were busy purifying the sacred hilltop in a mythological cooperation marvelous to the soul's perception.

   2005, Scott Elliot Hicks, The Shattering Light of Stars, page 62