See Belsnickel on Wiktionary
{
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"ref": "1973, Samuel Redsecker II Slaymaker, Captives' Mansion: An American Family Chronicle Covering Nine Generations and Two Hundred Years in a Pennsylvania Rural Manor, Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 39:",
"text": "[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.",
"type": "quote"
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],
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"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."
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"expansion": "→ Brazilian Portuguese: Pelznickel",
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"text": "→ Brazilian Portuguese: Pelznickel"
}
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"Bels‧nic‧kel"
],
"lang": "Hunsrik",
"lang_code": "hrx",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"Belsnickel"
],
"id": "en-Belsnickel-hrx-noun-dG0zJe7H",
"links": [
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],
"tags": [
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{
"categories": [
{
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"_dis": "3 97",
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{
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],
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"Santa Claus"
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[
"Santa Claus",
"Santa Claus"
]
],
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{
"word": "Krisskindche"
}
],
"tags": [
"masculine"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈpelsˌnikəl/"
},
{
"rhymes": "-ikəl"
}
],
"word": "Belsnickel"
}
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "0 0 0",
"kind": "other",
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"name": "Christmas",
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],
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{
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"templates": [
{
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"2": "Belsnickel",
"bor": "1"
},
"expansion": "→ English: Belsnickel",
"name": "desc"
}
],
"text": "→ English: Belsnickel"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Certainly a compound of some /bɛls/ syllable plus a diminutive/hypocorism of the name Nicholas; the first component is conventionally viewed as Bels (pelt/fur), but the homophony involved with pelts (furs/Bels/pels) and pelting (belting/beating/belse/pelzen) is evidenced in all of these Germanic languages (English, Pennsylvania German, and some German dialects) and cannot be excluded as an influence on the overlapping notions of Belsnickel as a pelt-clad figure who pelts naughty children. For example, some Rhenish dialects have pelzen or belzen, \"to wallop or to drub\", and Pennsylvania German has belse, \"to beat/flog\".",
"head_templates": [
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"expansion": "Belsnickel m",
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"lang_code": "pdc",
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"glosses": [
"Belsnickel"
],
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],
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"St. Nicholas"
],
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[
"St. Nicholas",
"St. Nicholas"
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],
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]
},
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}
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"Santa Claus"
],
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[
"Santa Claus",
"Santa Claus"
]
],
"tags": [
"masculine"
]
}
],
"word": "Belsnickel"
}
{
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"etymology_templates": [
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"3": "Belsnickel"
},
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"name": "bor+"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Borrowed from Pennsylvania German Belsnickel.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "Belsnickel",
"name": "en-proper noun"
}
],
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"text": "[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.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"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."
],
"links": [
[
"Germanophone",
"Germanophone"
],
[
"corporal punishment",
"corporal punishment"
],
[
"spiriting them away",
"spirit away"
],
[
"Homologous",
"homologue"
],
[
"Krampus",
"Krampus"
]
],
"wikipedia": [
"Belsnickel"
]
}
],
"word": "Belsnickel"
}
{
"categories": [
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"Hunsrik entries with incorrect language header",
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{
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"2": "Pelznickel",
"bor": "1"
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"expansion": "→ Brazilian Portuguese: Pelznickel",
"name": "desc"
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],
"text": "→ Brazilian Portuguese: Pelznickel"
}
],
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"2": "Belsnickel"
},
"expansion": "Pennsylvania German Belsnickel",
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"forms": [
{
"form": "Pelznickel",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
],
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"1": "m"
},
"expansion": "Belsnickel m",
"name": "hrx-proper noun"
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],
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"Bels‧nic‧kel"
],
"lang": "Hunsrik",
"lang_code": "hrx",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"Belsnickel"
],
"links": [
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"Belsnickel",
"Belsnickel#English"
]
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"masculine"
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},
{
"glosses": [
"Santa Claus"
],
"links": [
[
"Santa Claus",
"Santa Claus"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Krisskindche"
}
],
"tags": [
"masculine"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈpelsˌnikəl/"
},
{
"rhymes": "-ikəl"
}
],
"word": "Belsnickel"
}
{
"categories": [
"Pages with 3 entries",
"Pages with entries",
"Pennsylvania German entries with incorrect language header",
"Pennsylvania German lemmas",
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"descendants": [
{
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"templates": [
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"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "Belsnickel",
"bor": "1"
},
"expansion": "→ English: Belsnickel",
"name": "desc"
}
],
"text": "→ English: Belsnickel"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Certainly a compound of some /bɛls/ syllable plus a diminutive/hypocorism of the name Nicholas; the first component is conventionally viewed as Bels (pelt/fur), but the homophony involved with pelts (furs/Bels/pels) and pelting (belting/beating/belse/pelzen) is evidenced in all of these Germanic languages (English, Pennsylvania German, and some German dialects) and cannot be excluded as an influence on the overlapping notions of Belsnickel as a pelt-clad figure who pelts naughty children. For example, some Rhenish dialects have pelzen or belzen, \"to wallop or to drub\", and Pennsylvania German has belse, \"to beat/flog\".",
"head_templates": [
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"2": "proper noun",
"g": "m"
},
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"name": "head"
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],
"lang": "Pennsylvania German",
"lang_code": "pdc",
"pos": "name",
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"Belsnickel"
],
"links": [
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{
"glosses": [
"St. Nicholas"
],
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"St. Nicholas",
"St. Nicholas"
]
],
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]
},
{
"glosses": [
"Santa Claus"
],
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[
"Santa Claus",
"Santa Claus"
]
],
"tags": [
"masculine"
]
}
],
"word": "Belsnickel"
}
Download raw JSONL data for Belsnickel meaning in All languages combined (5.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-27 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (a4e883e and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.