Word: gremlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There's a spherical middle-aged Gremlin Who'll spin on your stick like a top. . . . -R.A.F. Coastal Commrnd...
Referring to your article on "Gremlins" [TIME, Sept. 14], credit for the discovery of the European gremlin should, I believe, go to an unknown weather forecaster at Le Bourget Airport, Paris. I knew the pilot concerned. (He has since been killed...
Incidentally, your article fails to mention that well-known cousin to the gremlin, the "Hopschneider," who lives on the ski trails in Switzerland and Canada, and emerges suddenly from behind trees in order to cross the skis of runners as they go by. As you dig yourself out and disentangle your limbs, their squeaky laughter can be heard echoing through the pines...
Daring. Bomber pilots say that the most annoying gremlins are those which like to play seesaw on the automatic horizon or use the ship's compass for a merry-go-round while the pilots are trying to fly blind. The most dangerous gremlins are those which delight in covering bombers' wings with ice. These are a middle-aged breed of gremlin, called spandules, who never bother with planes flying lower than 10,000 feet...
Necessary. Nothing could be more natural than that out of the tradition of Irish, Scottish and English whimsy the gremlin should appear, streamlined for the 20th Century. There is a sociological and psychological necessity in the thinking of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples to conjure up the embodiment of fate in a charming form. Herr Goebbels in Berlin would not understand...