Word.ws English Dictionary

tomte

tomte noun: a small human-like creature in Nordic folklore that lives on farmsteads and watches over their inhabitants.

Noun

tomte (plural tomtes)

  1. A small human-like creature in Nordic folklore that lives on farmsteads and watches over their inhabitants.
    • In Sweden the Tomte is sometimes seen at noon, in summer, slowly and stealthily dragging a straw or an ear of corn. [...] Any one who treated the industrious Tomte with respect, and set store by the smallest straw, became rich, and neatness and regularity prevailed in his household.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 147

Forms of tomte

pluraltomtes

Origin of tomte

Borrowed from Swedish tomte.

Questions about tomte

What does tomte mean?
Tomte means a small human-like creature in Nordic folklore that lives on farmsteads and watches over their inhabitants.
What part of speech is tomte?
Tomte is a noun.
What is the plural of tomte?
The plural of tomte is tomtes.

Words near tomte in the dictionary

  1. Tomson
  2. TOMT
  3. tomtate
  4. tomtates
  5. tomtato
  6. tomte
  7. Tomteboda
  8. tomtes
  9. tomtit
  10. tomtits
  11. tomtom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tomte (page history and authors). 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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