Shapeshifter vs Changeling - What's the difference?
shapeshifter | changeling |
(fantasy, mythology) A creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will
* 2000: Glen Cook, Water Sleeps
* 2003: Michael Bathgate, The Fox's Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters, Transformations and Duplicities
* 2004: Devin Grayson, Smallville: City
(mythology) In British, Irish and Scandinavian mythology, an infant of a fairy, sprite or troll that the creature has secretly exchanged for a human infant.
(informal, rare) An infant secretly exchanged with another infant; swapling.
(science fiction, and, fantasy) An organism which can change shape to mimic others.
(obsolete) A simpleton; an idiot.
* Dryden
(obsolete) One apt to change; a waverer.
* Shakespeare
As nouns the difference between changeling and shapeshifter
is that changeling is in British, Irish and Scandinavian mythology, an infant of a fairy, sprite or troll that the creature has secretly exchanged for a human infant while shapeshifter is a creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will.shapeshifter
English
(Shapeshifting)Noun
(en noun)- The shapeshifter Lisa Bowalk, unable to shed the guise of a black panther, had gone onto the plain as a prisoner but was not now to be found among the dead above or the Captured down below.
- Like the teller of shapeshifter' stories—who conjures a shifting world of perceptions and expectations for his or her audience that is strikingly similar to the worlds created by the ' shapeshifter for its victims—the cultural practice of imagination...is an inherently shifty enterprise....
- There have also been verified reports of fire-starters and ice-makers and a shapeshifter so powerful she was able to frame another Smallville citizen for a bank robbery!
changeling
English
Noun
(en noun)- (Macaulay)
- Changelings and fools of heaven, and thence shut out.
- Fickle changelings .
