CHANGELING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Changeling

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noun

Changeling n.

One who, or that which, is left or taken in the place of another, as a child exchanged by fairies. "Such, men do changelings call, so changed by fairies' theft." "The changeling (a substituted writing) never known."

A simpleton; an idiot. "Changelings and fools of heaven, and thence shut out." "Wildly we roam in discontent about."

One apt to change; a waverer. "Fickle changelings."

adjective

Changeling adj.

Taken or left in place of another; changed. "A little changeling boy."

Given to change; inconstant. (Obs.) "Some are so studiously changeling."

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Etymology of 'Changeling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books

... 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 the author ...

— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... send 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 service were "provoking puppet," "malicious elf," "sprite," "changeling," &c. 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 ...

— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Orleans and his wife at a time when it was a great object with them to have a son. The little girl grew up in the jailer Chiappini's house under the name of Maria Stella Petronilla. There is little doubt that she was a changeling, but the link is imperfect which would connect her with the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. She was ill-treated by the jailer's wife, but was very beautiful. Lord Newburgh, an English nobleman, saw her and ...

— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... 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 ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of clubs! My fingers left it as though it were a snake. It was the eight of clubs! Where I had seen, in fancy, the queen of hearts, there lay like a changeling the eight of clubs, with corner bent as ...

— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

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