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Trickster vs Shapeshifter - What's the difference?

trickster | shapeshifter |

As nouns the difference between trickster and shapeshifter

is that trickster is a mythological figure responsible for teaching others through the use of guile and treason while shapeshifter is a creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will.

trickster

English

Alternative forms

* Trickster (especially in the sense of the mythological figure)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A mythological figure responsible for teaching others through the use of guile and treason.
  • One who performs a trick.
  • An impish or playful person.
  • A fraud (person who performs a trick for the purpose of unlawful gain).

    • Related terms

    * trick

    See also

    * Loki * jester * prankster * gadfly

    shapeshifter

    English

    (Shapeshifting)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (fantasy, mythology) A creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will
  • * 2000: Glen Cook, Water Sleeps
    • 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.
  • * 2003: Michael Bathgate, The Fox's Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters, Transformations and Duplicities
    • 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....
  • * 2004: Devin Grayson, Smallville: City
    • 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!