kobold
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.07 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An ambivalent, sometimes vindictive, spirit that is capable of materialising as an object or human, often a child; a sprite.
noun
One of a diminutive and usually malevolent race of beings, often with a reptilian or dog-like appearance.
Example Sentences
- "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.'"
- "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."
- "When the Kobold is about coming into any place, he first, in this way, makes trial of the disposition of the family."
- "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; […] ."
- "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."
- "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."