belsnickel
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.07 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A companion of St. Nicholas in some Germanophone regions, with various cultural roles, including rewarding well-behaved children with gifts and punishing ill-behaved children by corporal punishment or by spiriting them away from their homes. Homologous with Krampus in other regions.
Example Sentences
- "[Describing a market scene of the 1780s] Spotted throughout the marketplace, too, were piles of greens—cedar and pine trees—awaiting purchase by the German burghers, who would dress them gaily in candles on Christmas Eve while their kinder watched—some quaking from fear of the Belsnickel Man, who was prone to seize and carry off in the dead of that very night all wee transgressors of the year just past."
Etymology
Borrowed from Pennsylvania German Belsnickel.