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Changeling   Listen
Changeling

noun
1.
A person of subnormal intelligence.  Synonyms: cretin, half-wit, idiot, imbecile, moron, retard.
2.
A child secretly exchanged for another in infancy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books



... a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm a changeling. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... One wants to kiss the baby, and bends over the cradle. Suddenly he starts back. What a nose! The deceit is found out and the shepherds are very angry. Yet even in their anger they can hardly help laughing. Mak and Gill, however, are ready of wit. They will not own to the theft. It is a changeling child, they say. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... happiness of the father was made by the child's taking the downward road. "At a later day," says Motley, "when the unfortunate eldest son of Orange returned from Spain, after twenty-seven years' absence, a changeling and a Spaniard, the restoration of those very estates was offered to him by Philip II., provided he would continue to pay a fixed proportion of their rents to the family of his father's murderer. The education which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... of mine, madam. Rather do I believe her some changeling forced upon us by witches' craft. Never did Stafford betray trust before! Stay me not! Whether child or changeling yet still shall ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse and brought him ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... little squawberry vine nestling under the dead leaves. It had not lived in peace and seclusion very long before the women came and tore up many of the vines, stopping just before they reached the changeling, and saying, "We will come back to-morrow and get ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss

... sorry to say, by the way, that in the hurry of departure this morning I took away the wrong umbrella and left my own. I am sending back the changeling with all proper apologies. Would you mind sending me mine? It has a crook handle (cane) and a plain silver band with my initials engraved on it. Please give my love to Harry and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various

... the masquerade proceeds with spirit. Isabella mixes in the festive scene, disguised in a domino, made of black sticking-plaster. Czerina overhears that she is a usurper and a changeling, and expresses her surprise in a line most unblushingly stolen from Fitz-Ball and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... an exception, a changeling of the Fairies. You must not look for your mother's soul in Joanna's eyes." He jumped from his chair, and came towards me, resting his paw upon my knee. "I am glad you have not spoken of me, Etienne. Now you ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar

... whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate the changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus, Leontes are admirable descriptions of instinctive temperaments: indeed the play of Coriolanus is the greatest of Shakespear's comedies; but description is not philosophy; and comedy neither compromises ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... fond of collaboration, and received assistance in his best work from Drayton, Webster, Dekker, Rowley, and Jonson; his comedies are smart and buoyant, sometimes indecorous; his masques more than usually elaborate and careful; in the comedy of "The Spanish Gypsy," and the tragedies of "The Changeling," and "Women beware Women," is found the best fruit of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... seemed to Jack that the whole thing must be a dream. This simply wasn't Frank at all. The wild idea came to him that the man who sat before him with Frank's features was some kind of changeling. Mentally ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... the Muse wou'd fain Except ONE of the pension'd Train, (One meritorious 'bove the rest, A patriot Minister, confest) Yet strictest honour can't acquit That Pensioner, who once was P——. Instance on instance to my view Come rushing, of the changeling crew, That I could quarrel with my Nature, To think that Man is such a Creature— And are we all a fickle tribe, Venal to ev'ry golden bribe? Is there not one of honour found, In all the List of Placemen found? Yes—one there is, in perils tried, Yet never known to change ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... that in which Borrow says, when describing the interior of the Mosque at Tangier: "I looked around for the abominable thing, and found it not; no scarlet strumpet with a crown of false gold sat nursing an ugly changeling in a niche." In later editions the words "no scarlet strumpet," etc., were changed to "the besetting sin of the pseudo-Christian Church did not stare me in the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... they came and from my bed They stole my babe, and left behind A thing I hate, a thing I dread— A changeling who is old and blind; He's moaning all the night and day For those who took ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... a visit last summer. His presence was hailed with enthusiastic delight, and people crowded from the most remote settlements to gaze upon the tiny man. One poor Irishwoman insisted "that he was not a human crathur, but a poor fairy changeling, and that he would vanish away some day, and never be heard of again." Signor Blitz, the great conjuror, occasionally pays us a visit, but his visits are like angel visits, few and far between. His performance never fails in filling the large room in the court-house for several successive ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... father are idyllic. She is more necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented themselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps.... The ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single, slowly developing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... not only evacuated her into a consumption, but they have intoxicated her brain, until she is become delirious; she can no longer pursue her own interest, or, indeed, rightly distinguish it. Like the people of Nineveh, she can hardly tell her right hand from her left; but, as a changeling, is dazzled and delighted by an ignis fatuus, a Will-o'-the-wisp, an exhalation from the vilest materials in nature, that leads her astray through Westphalian bogs and deserts, and will one day break her neck over some barren rocks, or leave her sticking ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... who had been brought, By Fairy hands, and as a changeling left In human cradle, the sad substitute For a more smiling infant—Shelly sings Vague minstrelsies that speak a foreign birth, Among erratic tribes; yet not in vain His moral, and the fancies in his flight ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... blew fire-drakes in the skie! And giddie Flitter-mice, with lether wings! The scalie Beetles, with their habergeons, That make a humming Murmur as they flie! There, in the stocks of trees, white Faies doe dwell, And span-long Elves, that dance about a poole, With each a little Changeling, in their armes! The airie spirits play with falling starres, And mount the Sphere of fire, to kisse the Moone! While, shee sitts reading by the Glow-wormes light, Or rotten wood, o're which the worme hath crept, The banefull scedule of her nocent ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... grown so queer in your talk that I sometimes fancy you're half a changeling. May you sit with your grandam? What next? There, there, bring yer bit of a stool, and get the sampler out, and do a portion of the feather-stitch. Mind ye're careful, Mercy, and see as you count as ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... substituting their own offspring for the human mother to nurse. These dwarf babies were known as changelings, and were recognisable by their puny and wizened forms. To recover possession of her own babe, and to rid herself of the changeling, a woman was obliged either to brew beer in egg-shells or to grease the soles of the child's feet and hold them so near the flames that, attracted by their offspring's distressed cries, the dwarf parents would ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... bewitched," said the girl, suddenly taking him up in her arms. "I believe you are some little changeling god sent by your master Apollo to put his thoughts ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... comprehend your meaning now, and I won't get angry with you. I think I must be a changeling, in spirit probably; there could be no mistake, I presume, in my physical identity, but my heart always claims kindred most with the lean, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... eighteenth or nineteenth year." As a practical application of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advised the drowning of a certain child of twelve years old, on the ground of its being a devil's changeling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, the result of diabolical agency. "Formerly," says he, "the Papists, being superstitious people, alleged that persons thus afflicted had not been properly baptized, or had been baptized ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... ceremonies if ever time shall fit; but do you think I could leave my Lady's child—mere girl though it be—alone with owls, and follets, and REVENANTS, and heretics, and she unbaptized? She would be a changeling long ere morning, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest and most unbridled terror. What if he failed? And oh, tenfold worse! what if he succeeded? What detested and unnatural changeling would appear before me to claim my hand? And could there, I asked myself with a dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over my reluctance? I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a sign. Suppose, then, this ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... came to her. As he entered the doorway she noted how handsome he looked with his massive head and square-jawed face, and how utterly unlike any Arnott or Walrond known to her personally or by tradition. Had he been a changeling, such as the girl Bess spoke of, he could not have ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... and girle to the King's house, and there saw "The Mad Couple," which is but an ordinary play; but only Nell's and Hart's mad parts are most excellently done, but especially hers: which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad part, do beyond all imitation almost. [It pleased us mightily to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the children brought on the stage: the child crying, she by force got upon the stage, and took up her child ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... dare say I have only my come-uppings. You see, I was afraid Elsie wouldn't be lively enough! I had visions of an extremely proper, blase young person moping about, and rather dreaded her. Getting Elsie was like finding a changeling." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... else I should do it in the day. I do not sit up enough to hurt me. I have, on an average, three hours' night-work, five days in the week; and if that can damage a strong fellow like me, call me a puny changeling." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... so many Runic secrets, explained to me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept. Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest, has tempted on, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... selfe, no more as a virgine, but as a wife, and about dinner time must by order come forth Sicut sponsa de thalamo, very demurely and stately to be sene and acknowledged of her parents and kinsfolkes whether she were the same woman or a changeling, or dead or aliue, or maimed by any accident nocturnall. The same Musicians came againe with this last part, and greeted them both with a Psalme of new applausions, for that they had either of them so well behaued ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... the Amphibians had been a little separate from the Ssassaror and when the Earthmen came they did not get any more neighborly. Nevertheless, they preserved excellent relations and they, too, participated in the Changeling-custom. ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... wickedness while still in the cradle, possessing superhuman cunning and skill in music. One way of getting rid of these demon children was to ill-treat them so that their people would come for them, bringing the right ones back; or one might boil egg-shells in the sight of the changeling, who would declare his demon nature by saying that in his centuries of life he had never seen such a ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... too. The boy was born in the middle of a beet-field, and I carried him back to the farm myself in my apron. He was deformed even then: the mistress's evil eyes had done it. I said to myself that she should always have the changeling in her sight, and refused to go away. The farmer couldn't quite bring himself to turn me out by force, and so he put me into the house ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he was acquainted with maritime life, and especially with the carrying-trade between Spain and the West Indies? We respectfully submit to the court the following passage from Middleton and Rowley's "Changeling,"—first published in 1653, but written many years before. Jasperino, seeing a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... very constructively, it had become a fierce though governed passion with both—to learn something of the spiritual life coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere, that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; it was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... at one time, in Wales, that the Fairies exchanged their own weakly or deformed offspring for the strong children of mortals. The child supposed to have been left by the Fairies in the cradle, or elsewhere, was commonly called a changeling. This faith was not confined to Wales; it was as common in Ireland, Scotland, and England, as it was in Wales. Thus, in Spenser's Faery Queen, reference is made in the following words ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a malicious pleasure in suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to the superstitious notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy changeling. ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell

... from his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It might have been called ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... The 'Changeling' alone would sustain a reputation. It seems always like the plaintive but sweet warble of some unknown bird rising from the midst of tall water-rushes in the day's dim dawning. A wonderful melody as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... personally a very honest, a very high-minded, or a very good man, although we are willing to count him amiable, ready to make very considerable allowance for his period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish changeling, in the matter of his "perversion" to Popery; although we yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine, and magnificent ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden



Words linked to "Changeling" :   simple, child, shaver, mongoloid, simpleton, tyke, minor, nestling, small fry, nipper, fry, tiddler, kid, tike, youngster



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