elfin

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛlfɪn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛlfɪn

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”).

elfin (plural elfins)

1. An elf; an inhabitant of fairy-land.
   • 1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 291:

     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.

2. A little urchin or child.
3. Any of the butterflies in the subgenus Incisalia of the North American lycaenid genus Callophrys.

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

elfin (comparative more elfin, superlative most elfin)

1. Relating to or resembling an elf or elves, especially in tiny size or features.
   • 1851, Daniel Wilson, The Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, page 125:

     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 a comparatively recent period, to their having been shot by the fairies with Elfin arrows.

   • 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 Days before Tono-Bungay was Invented), page 32:

     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.

   • 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), pages 377–378:

     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.

   • 2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The Onion AV Club:

     He’s forced to travel back to 1969 to prevent an evil alien (a shockingly effective, nearly unrecognizable Jemaine Clement of Flight Of The Conchords, playing sort of a psychotic extraterrestrial-biker serial killer) from destroying the world by killing Brolin. 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.

   • 2022 September 22, HarryBlank, “Mind Over Matter”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 23 May 2024:

     Nhung Ngo had nearly the shortest legs at Site-43. 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.

• see list in elven

• lifen, nifle

• elvin

From elf +‎ -in.

• IPA^(key): /ɛlˈfɪn/
• Hyphenation: el‧fin
• Rhymes: -ɪn

elfin f (plural elfinnen, diminutive elfinnetje n, masculine elf)

1. a female elf (fantasy humanoid)