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Hobgobʹlin

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Puck or Robin Good-fellow. Keightley thinks it a corruption of Rob-Goblin—i.e. the goblin Robin, just as Hodge is the nickname of Roger, which seems to agree with the subjoined quotation:

1

“Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck.”

Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. 1.

⁂ Hob is certainly sometimes used for a sprite or fairy, as a hob-lantern—i.e. an ignis fatuus or fairy-lantern, but this may mean a “Puck-lantern” or “Robin Goodfellow-lantern.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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