[143], With industrialisation and mass education, traditional folklore about elves waned, but as the phenomenon of popular culture emerged, elves were reimagined, in large part on the basis of Romantic literary depictions and associated medievalism. [154] In the Finnic-speaking world, the term usually thought most closely equivalent to elf is haltija (in Finnish) or haldaja (Estonian). The influence of Shakespeare and Michael Drayton made the use of elf and fairy for very small beings the norm, and had a lasting effect seen in fairy tales about elves, collected in the modern period. [107][108] This deception sometimes shows the seductive side apparent in English and Scandinavian material:[105] most famously, the early thirteenth-century Heinrich von Morungen's fifth Minnesang begins "Von den elben wirt entsehen vil manic man / Sô bin ich von grôzer liebe entsên" ("full many a man is bewitched by elves / thus I too am bewitched by great love"). 750-1050)-language text, Articles containing Malagasy-language text, Lang and lang-xx code promoted to ISO 639-1, Articles containing Middle High German (ca. [66], Like words for gods and men, the word elf is used in personal names where words for monsters and demons are not. Although this word took a variety of forms in different Old English dialects, these converged on the form elf during the Middle English period. [158] Some of the comparisons are quite precise: for example, the root of the word jinn was used in medieval Arabic terms for madness and possession in similar ways to the Old English word ylfig,[159] which was derived from elf and also denoted prophetic states of mind implicitly associated with elfish possession. [61] The term may not always have denoted an actual projectile: shot could mean "a sharp pain" as well as "projectile". [3] Where enough people have believed in the reality of elves that those beliefs then had real effects in the world, they can be understood as part of people's worldview, and as a social reality: a thing which, like the exchange value of a dollar bill or the sense of pride stirred up by a national flag, is real because of people's beliefs rather than as an objective reality. The "Christmas elves" of contemporary popular culture are a relatively recent creation, popularized during the late nineteenth-century in the United States. Found 20 sentences matching phrase "Elf dili".Found in 6 ms. Hafstein, "narratives about the insurrections of elves demonstrate supernatural sanction against development and against urbanization; that is to say, the supernaturals protect and enforce pastoral values and traditional rural culture. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? elf definition: 1. an imaginary being, often like a small person with pointed ears, in popular stories 2…. Loriel: English . noun elves A supernatural creature of folk tales, typically represented as a small, delicate, elusive figure in human form with pointed ears, magical powers, and a capricious nature. We also provide more translator online here. 'All Intensive Purposes' or 'All Intents and Purposes'? What does elf mean in English? Yet Andersen also wrote about elvere in The Elfin Hill. [99] The relatively few mentions of elves in the chivalric sagas tend even to be whimsical. "[132] Elves are also prominent, in similar roles, in contemporary Icelandic literature. Thus, the alf found in the fairy tale The Elf of the Rose by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is so tiny he can have a rose blossom for home, and "wings that reached from his shoulders to his feet". Alena. Definition a small imaginary person with magic powers View the full definition in the Macmillan Dictionary Origin and usage The noun elf comes from Old English and is of Germanic origin. It is defined by the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch as a "nature-god or nature-demon, equated with the Fauns of Classical mythology ... regarded as eerie, ferocious beings ... As the mare he messes around with women". Jakob Grimm thought whiteness implied positive moral connotations, and, noting Snorri Sturluson's ljósálfar, suggested that elves were divinities of light. elves ) 1. For this reason, belief in elves has, from the Middle Ages through into recent scholarship, often been labelled "pagan" and a "superstition". Integrating elves into Christian cosmology without identifying them as demons. This follows the common method of pluralizing nouns in English ending in an –f (shelf/shelves, calf/calves). [125], Elves entered early modern elite culture most clearly in the literature of Elizabethan England. [97][98] According to Hrólfs saga kraka, Hrolfr Kraki's half-sister Skuld was the half-elven child of King Helgi and an elf-woman (álfkona). [127], The ballads are characterised by sexual encounters between everyday people and humanlike beings referred to in at least some variants as elves (the same characters also appear as mermen, dwarves, and other kinds of supernatural beings). [52], Beliefs in elves causing illnesses remained prominent in early modern Scotland, where elves were viewed as being supernaturally powerful people who lived invisibly alongside everyday rural people. For example, a number of early modern ballads in the British Isles and Scandinavia, originating in the medieval period, describe elves attempting to seduce or abduct human characters. Dating in use from before the 12th century, elf has similarities to a number of related words in other languages, such as the Middle Low German alf ("incubus") and the Old Norse alfr ("elf"). Find more words! ইংরেজি - বাংলা Online অভিধান। Providing the maximum meaning of a … The synonyms of Elf include are Brownie, Elfin, Fairy, Fay and Pixie. In The Queen of Elfland's Nourice, a woman is abducted to be a wet nurse to the elf-queen's baby, but promised that she may return home once the child is weaned. [146], In works where elves are the main characters, such as The Silmarillion or Wendy and Richard Pini's comic book series Elfquest, elves exhibit a similar range of behaviour to a human cast, distinguished largely by their superhuman physical powers. [112], As in Old Norse, however, there are few characters identified as elves. Delivered to your inbox! before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1, Middle English, from Old English ælf; akin to Old Norse alfr elf & perhaps to Latin albus white — more at alb. It could be dangerous and one could become ill if one had trodden over such a place or if one destroyed anything there. Elb, Elben was consequently introduced in the 1972 German translation of The Lord of the Rings, repopularising the form in German. Even when Icelanders do not explicitly express their belief, they are often reluctant to express disbelief. They left a circle where they had danced, which were called älvdanser (elf dances) or älvringar (elf circles), and to urinate in one was thought to cause venereal diseases. Spenser also presented his own explanation of the origins of the Elfe and Elfin kynd, claiming that they were created by Prometheus. elf /elf/ noun (plural elves /elvz/) [ countable] an imaginary creature like a small person with pointed ears and magical powers → fairy, pixie Examples from the Corpus elf • Twoflower had always wanted to meet an elf. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien; these re-popularised the idea of elves as human-sized and humanlike beings. These conceptions remained prominent in twentieth-century children's literature, for example Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree series, and were influenced by German Romantic literature. [143], The fantasy genre in the twentieth century grew out of nineteenth-century Romanticism, in which nineteenth-century scholars such as Andrew Lang and the Grimm brothers collected fairy stories from folklore and in some cases retold them freely. [111] Correspondingly, in the early modern period, elves are described in north Germany doing the evil bidding of witches; Martin Luther believed his mother to have been afflicted in this way. [130] A 2006 and 2007 study by the University of Iceland's Faculty of Social Sciences revealed that many would not rule out the existence of elves and ghosts, a result similar to a 1974 survey by Erlendur Haraldsson. extremely low frequency ) n. pl. The following table summarises the situation in the main modern standard languages of Scandinavia. But in early modern Scotland elf-schot and other terms like elf-arrowhead are sometimes used of neolithic arrow-heads, apparently thought to have been made by elves. Accounts of Skuld in earlier sources, however, do not include this material. Some of the early modern ballads, indeed, are still quite widely known, whether through school syllabuses or modern folk music. Since belief in supernatural beings is so ubiquitous in human cultures, however, scholars no longer believe such explanations are valid. They therefore give people an unusual degree of access to ideas of elves from older traditional culture. [47], The earliest surviving manuscripts mentioning elves in any Germanic language are from Anglo-Saxon England. Accordingly, in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Die Wichtelmänner (literally, "the little men"), the title protagonists are two tiny naked men who help a shoemaker in his work. Viewing elves as being more or less like people, and more or less outside Christian cosmology. [65] Rather, recent scholarship suggests Anglo-Saxon elves, like elves in Scandinavia or the Irish Aos Sí, were regarded as people. Although elfs may occasionally be found in print the accepted modern plural form of elf is elves. From a scientific viewpoint, elves are not considered objectively real. What made you want to look up elf? The idea also occurs in later traditions in Scandinavia and beyond, so it may be an early attestation of a prominent tradition. You can complete the translation of elf given by the English-French Collins dictionary with other dictionaries such as: Wikipedia, Lexilogos, Larousse dictionary, Le Robert, Oxford, Grévisse. They were round places where the grass had been flattened like a floor. By Lake Tisnaren, I have seen one of those. April 1, 2020 at 8:06 pm. The Urdu Word جن Meaning in English is Elf. Elves remain a prominent feature of fantasy books and games nowadays. [33] During the Old English period, separate forms were used for female elves (such as ælfen, putatively from common Germanic *), but during the Middle English period the word elf came routinely to include female beings. [62] Compare with the following excerpt from a 1749–50 ode by William Collins: Because of elves' association with illness, in the twentieth century, most scholars imagined that elves in the Anglo-Saxon tradition were small, invisible, demonic beings, causing illnesses with arrows. [24][25] Research has shown, however, that stories about elves have often been used as a way for people to think metaphorically about real-life ethnic others. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. See the full definition for elf in the English Language Learners Dictionary, Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for elf, Nglish: Translation of elf for Spanish Speakers, Britannica English: Translation of elf for Arabic Speakers, Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about elf. The same idea is present in two post-classical Eddaic poems, which are also influenced by chivalric romance or Breton lais, Kötludraumur and Gullkársljóð. Learn more. Mention of the land of Álfheimr is found in Heimskringla while Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar recounts a line of local kings who ruled over Álfheim, who since they had elven blood were said to be more beautiful than most men. However, in the modern languages, traditional terms related to álfr have tended to be replaced with other terms. Top ELF acronym definition related to defence: English Language Framework [82] There does not seem to have been any clear-cut distinction between humans and gods; like the Æsir, then, elves were presumably thought of as being humanlike and existing in opposition to the giants. [83] Many commentators have also (or instead) argued for conceptual overlap between elves and dwarves in Old Norse mythology, which may fit with trends in the medieval German evidence. However, the characteristics and names of these beings have varied widely across time and space, and they cannot be neatly categorised. Goethe's poem then took on a life of its own, inspiring the Romantic concept of the Erlking, which was influential on literary images of elves from the nineteenth century on. The Sagas of Icelanders, Bishops' sagas, and contemporary sagas, whose portrayal of the supernatural is generally restrained, rarely mention álfar, and then only in passing. [2] However, elves have in many times and places been believed to be real beings. The Modern German Elf (m) and Elfe (f) was introduced as a loan-word from English in the 1740s[137][138] and was prominent in Christoph Martin Wieland's 1764 translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. [41], Personal names provide the only evidence for elf in Gothic, which must have had the word *albs (plural *albeis). Accessed 20 Dec. 2020. Definition of elf noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Lysanor ... Livi and Alva are less popular picks bearing the popular meaning, and both have the in-demand V sound within them. English to English. In particular, Álfheimr (literally "elf-world") is mentioned as being given to Freyr in Grímnismál. English . [88], A kenning (poetic metaphor) for the sun, álfröðull (literally "elf disc"), is of uncertain meaning but is to some suggestive of a close link between elves and the sun. However, oral traditions about beings like elves remained prominent in Scandinavia into the early twentieth century. abbr. A widespread survivor of these in modern English is Alfred (Old English Ælfrēd, "elf-advice"). [45], In later Old Icelandic, alfr' ("elf") and the personal name which in Common Germanic had been *Aþa(l)wulfaz both coincidentally became álfr~Álfr. It is one of the cool elf names. They have therefore played a major role in transmitting traditional ideas about elves in post-medieval cultures. [164], Supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore, This article is about the mythical creature. Elf, plural Elves, in Germanic folklore, originally, a spirit of any kind, later specialized into a diminutive creature, usually in tiny human form. Learn more. Unknown . They occur most often in oral narratives and news reporting in which they disrupt house- and road-building. [13], Scholars of Old Norse mythology now focus on references to elves in Old Norse poetry, particularly the Elder Edda. In the words of the local historian Anne Marie Hellström: ... on lake shores, where the forest met the lake, you could find elf circles. Non-human anito are known as diwata, usually euphemistically referred to as dili ingon nato ('those unlike us'). [142], English and German literary traditions both influenced the British Victorian image of elves, which appeared in illustrations as tiny men and women with pointed ears and stocking caps. In the eighteenth century, German Romanticist writers were influenced by this notion of the elf, and reimported the English word elf into the German language. For example, there are prayers which invoke God's help against nocturnal attacks by Alpe. [92] Elves also appear in a couple of verse spells, including the Bergen rune-charm from among the Bryggen inscriptions. Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts, written by Christians, in Old and Middle English, medieval German, and Old Norse. ELF is "defined functionally by its use in intercultural communication rather than formally by its reference to native-speaker norms" whereas English as a second or foreign language aims at meeting native speaker norms and gives prominence to native speaker cultural aspects. What does ELF stand for in English? This follows the common method of pluralizing nouns in English ending in an –f (shelf/shelves, calf/calves). The most common, though also most harmless case was various irritating skin rashes, which were called älvablåst (elven puff) and could be cured by a forceful counter-blow (a handy pair of bellows was most useful for this purpose). For example, elves can function to encode real-world racial others in video games,[5][147] or to influence gender norms through literature.[148]. 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