Pixy

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A small, playful fairy or elf from folklore who delights in tricks and mischief
2. A tiny mischievous spirit of folk tales, often shown as a playful woodland sprite
3. An elf-like creature in legend known for teasing people and leading travelers astray

Etymology: Pixie is a word whose origin nobody has pinned down. It first appears in the 17th century in the folklore of southwest England, where it named a small mischievous fairy, but the record does not show where the name itself came from. One suggestion links it to a dialect word "pysk", meaning fairy, recorded in Swedish dialects. The difficulty is that nothing explains how a Swedish dialect term would have travelled to the far southwest of Britain. A second idea connects the word to Puck, the mischievous sprite of English tradition, with the diminutive ending "-sy" added on. This would make the name a local variant of a familiar figure, but it is an equally unproven guess. The most that can be said is that the word belongs to the rural folklore of the West Country, and its ancestry remains open.

Synonyms: pixie, sprite, elf, fairy