Word.ws English Dictionary

elfin

/ˈɛlfɪn/

elfin noun: an elf; an inhabitant of fairy-land.

Noun

elfin (plural elfins)

  1. An elf; an inhabitant of fairy-land.
    • It was quite an expedition that Ida met, a kind of elfin's rout it looked in the moonlight, children and animals and a fairy-like presence with a face like a moon-lily, all scampering and squealing and whoofing and miauling in a merry game they were making of their progress.1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 291
  2. A little urchin or child.
  3. Any of the butterflies in the subgenus Incisalia of the North American lycaenid genus Callophrys.

Adjective

elfin (comparative more elfin, superlative most elfin)

  1. Of or relating to elves.
    • The Elf-bolt is associated with many rustic fancies not yet altogether eradicated from the popular mind. It occupied no unimportant part among the paraphernalia of Scottish witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the occurrence of any sudden disease amongst cattle was ascribed until...1851, Daniel Wilson, The Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, page 125
    • If Burd Ellen had gone “widishins" round the church, she would, I think, have used the best homoeopathic specific against the Elf-King's power; for "to go widishins" was the chief element in elfin practices, and if mortals wished to resist or unspell elf-craft, they, too, had "to go widershins," or...1891 January 3, I. Gollancz, “Widishins”, in The Academy, London, page 14, column 3
  2. Resembling an elf or elves, especially in tiny size or features.
    • She was one of those elfin, rather precocious little girls, quick coloured, with dark hair, naturally curling dusky hair that was sometimes astray over her eyes, and eyes that were sometimes impishly dark, and sometimes a clear brown yellow.1908, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Of Bladesover House, and My Mother; and the Constitution of Society”, in Tono-Bungay […], Toronto, Ont.: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., →OCLC, 1st book (The...
    • Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy)...

elfin meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

elfin in Tamil

சிறுகூளி

elfin in Malayalam

elfish, elflike, elvish
അമാനുഷജീവിയെപ്പോലെയുള്ള, കുട്ടിച്ചാത്തനെസംബന്ധിച്ച, കുട്ടിച്ചാത്തനെപ്പോലുള്ള, കുട്ടിച്ചാത്തനെപ്പോലെ കുസൃതിയുള്ള, യക്ഷിയെപ്പോലെയുള്ള, വികൃതി കാണിക്കുന്ന

Examples of elfin in a sentence

  • Smith is aided in his quest by an elfin, time-jumping alien with psychic powers played by another Coen brothers veteran, A Serious Man star Michael Stuhlbarg.2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The Onion AV Club:
  • She was one of the shortest members of staff, though seven inches above beneath the positively elfin Delfina Ibanez, and yet Lillian found her inexplicably difficult to shake.2022 September 22, HarryBlank, “Mind Over Matter”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 23 May 2024:
  • I first met Demis Hassabis, the remarkable human, in the mid-2010s: an elfin figure with dark hair falling forward toward angular eyebrows, his face framed by standard-issue spectacles.2026, Sebastian Mallaby, “Introduction”, in The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence, Penguin...

All 11 example sentences with elfin

Synonyms of elfin

  • list in elven

Forms of elfin

Noun
pluralelfins
Adjective
comparativemore elfin
superlativemost elfin

Origin of elfin

From Middle English elven, from Old English elfen, ælfen (“nymph, spirit, fairy”), feminine of elf, ælf (“elf”), equivalent to elf + -in. Cognate with Middle High German elbinne (“a fairy, nymph”).

Partly from attributive use of Etymology 1, but reanalysed by Edmund Spenser as if equivalent to elf + -in. Compare elven (adjective), elvan.

Words formed from elfin

Phrases with elfin

Questions about elfin

What does elfin mean?
Elfin means an elf; an inhabitant of fairy-land.
What is elfin in Tamil?
Elfin in Tamil is சிறுகூளி. See Elfin meaning in Tamil.
How do you use elfin in a sentence?
Smith is aided in his quest by an elfin, time-jumping alien with psychic powers played by another Coen brothers veteran, A Serious Man star Michael Stuhlbarg.
What part of speech is elfin?
Elfin can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce elfin?
Elfin is pronounced /ˈɛlfɪn/.
What is the plural of elfin?
The plural of elfin is elfins.

Words near elfin in the dictionary

  1. elfettes
  2. ELFEXT
  3. elfhood
  4. elfic
  5. Elfick
  6. elfin
  7. elfin saddle
  8. elfin saddles
  9. elfin safety
  10. elfin wood
  11. elfin woods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elfin (page history and authors); elfin (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); elfin (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-elfin.wav.

Cite this entry: “elfin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elfin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.