Noun

(en noun)

(fantasy literature) A mythical malevolent phantom or grotesque diminutive humanoid; a kobold.

* 1872', , ''The Princess and the '''Goblin , page 50,

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* 2006 , Charlotte Bishop, Norty: The Chosen Ones , page 187,

At last the goblins' had a chance to rid themselves of one of the troublesome defenders, and two ' goblin warriors snatched the opportunity.

* 2010 , Thom L. Nichols, War: Return of the Elves , Part 1, page 37,

The goblin shifted the two younger ones closer to him. It looked like he was hiding behind them, using them as a shield.

The goblin looked pure evil. His eyes were brown.

* 2010', D. S. Macleod, ''The Middle Times: Rise of the '''Goblin King , page 229,

I shall send another entourage of goblins' back here to Desput with the '''goblins'''’ new ally the Pixy! These creatures deserve the same respect as any other ' goblin .

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=76, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Snakes and ladders , passage=Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins . For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you.}}

Noun

Noun

(en noun)

(German mythology) An ambivalent, sometimes vindictive, spirit that is capable of materialising as an object or human, often a child; a sprite.

* 1904 , , 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.'

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

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 .

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

* '', 2000 [1980], ''The Golden Key and Other Stories , page 96,

The king had seen all kinds of gnomes, goblins, and kobolds at his coronation;.

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

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.

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

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

(fantasy literature) One of a diminutive and usually malevolent race of beings.

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

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.