the.com/gremlin
the chaos goblin blamed for everything mechanics couldn't explain at 30,000 feet
means A small mischievous creature blamed for mysterious mechanical faults and unexplained malfunctions, especially in machines and aircraft.
from A 20th-century invention of British Royal Air Force slang, born among pilots and ground crews who needed someone to blame when engines sputtered and instruments misbehaved for no visible reason. Its exact roots are uncertain: one popular guess links it to 'goblin' (perhaps crossed with the beer brand Fremlin's), but no clear ancestry has been proven. It spread widely in WWII airfield culture and was cemented in the popular imagination by Roald Dahl, himself a wartime RAF pilot, whose 1943 story 'The Gremlins' carried the word into the wider world.
- origin
- Coined by 1920s RAF pilots blaming sabotage on imps
- rules
- No water, no food after midnight, no light
- wartime
- Roald Dahl wrote a gremlin book for Disney
- slang
- Now means anyone deliberately, gleefully causing trouble
gremlins film 1984 — joe dante's horror-comedy about mischievous creatures terrorizing a small town, starring zach galligan