"machine elf" meaning in English

See machine elf in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /məˈʃiːn ɛlf/ [General-American, Received-Pronunciation] Audio: en-au-machine elf.ogg Forms: machine elves [plural]
Etymology: Coined by American ethnobotanist and author Terence McKenna (1946–2000), who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychoactive plants. Head templates: {{en-noun|machine elves}} machine elf (plural machine elves)
  1. A kind of otherworldly humanoid figure sometimes seen during dimethyltryptamine (DMT) hallucinations. Wikipedia link: Terence McKenna Categories (topical): Recreational drugs
    Sense id: en-machine_elf-en-noun-sxv94YKe Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by American ethnobotanist and author Terence McKenna (1946–2000), who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychoactive plants.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "machine elves",
      "tags": [
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  "head_templates": [
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  "hyphenation": [
    "ma‧chine"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
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          "kind": "other",
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        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Recreational drugs",
          "orig": "en:Recreational drugs",
          "parents": [
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            "Matter",
            "Pharmacology",
            "Chemistry",
            "Nature",
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            "Medicine",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983 December, Terence McKenna, “Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness”, in The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History, [San Francisco, Calif.]: HarperSanFrancisco, published 1991, →ISBN:",
          "text": "[…] I describe them as self-transforming machine elves, for that is how they appear. These entities are dynamically contorting topological modules that are somehow distinct from the surrounding background, which is itself undergoing continuous transformation. […] The tryptamine Munchkins come, these hyperdimensional machine-elf entities, and they bathe one in love. It's not erotic but it is openhearted. It certainly feels good. These beings are like fractal reflections of some previously hidden and suddenly autonomous part of one's own psyche. And they are speaking, saying, \"Don't be alarmed. Remember, and do what we are doing.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1988, Diana Reed Slattery, quoting Terence McKenna, Xenolinguistics: Psychedelics, Language, and the Evolution of Consciousness, Berkeley, Calif.: Evolver Editions, North Atlantic Books, published 2015, →ISBN:",
          "text": "I found myself in the sort of auric equivalent of the Pope's private chapel, and there were insect elf machines proffering strange little tablets with strange writing on them. And it all went on, they were speaking in some kind of—there were these self-transforming machine-elf creatures—were speaking in some kind of colored language which condensed into rotating machines that were like Fabergé eggs, but crafted out of luminescent super-conducting ceramics, and liquid crystal gels, and all this stuff was so weird, and so alien, and so \"un-English-able\" that it was a complete shock.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994, Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, →ISBN, page 121:",
          "text": "Nearly everyone who smokes DMT reports hearing a high-pitched tone corresponding to what they believe is a ‘carrier wave’ of reality at that moment. The visual world begins to vibrate at the same frequency until everything breaks up into geometric patterns and crystalline twinkles. This is when the ‘machine elves’ show up, if they’re going to.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 1, Dan Carpenter, “The Invisible Landscape”, in A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience, Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, Inner Traditions – Bear & Company, published 2006, →ISBN, page 91:",
          "text": "There were times when I would watch this action for 45 minutes at a time … so long that the gravity of watching these melting Lego-beings (machine elves?) slice little pieces of themselves off, to create emotions and other information, was lost in boredom. (This has to be the machine elves. McKenna may have missed something by not investigating DXM—namely that the machine elf world appears to be self/brain.)",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A kind of otherworldly humanoid figure sometimes seen during dimethyltryptamine (DMT) hallucinations."
      ],
      "id": "en-machine_elf-en-noun-sxv94YKe",
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        [
          "dimethyltryptamine",
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          "DMT",
          "DMT"
        ],
        [
          "hallucination",
          "hallucination"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Terence McKenna"
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  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/məˈʃiːn ɛlf/",
      "tags": [
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    },
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      "audio": "en-au-machine elf.ogg",
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/En-au-machine_elf.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "machine elf"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by American ethnobotanist and author Terence McKenna (1946–2000), who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychoactive plants.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "machine elves",
      "tags": [
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    }
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  "head_templates": [
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          "ref": "1983 December, Terence McKenna, “Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness”, in The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History, [San Francisco, Calif.]: HarperSanFrancisco, published 1991, →ISBN:",
          "text": "[…] I describe them as self-transforming machine elves, for that is how they appear. These entities are dynamically contorting topological modules that are somehow distinct from the surrounding background, which is itself undergoing continuous transformation. […] The tryptamine Munchkins come, these hyperdimensional machine-elf entities, and they bathe one in love. It's not erotic but it is openhearted. It certainly feels good. These beings are like fractal reflections of some previously hidden and suddenly autonomous part of one's own psyche. And they are speaking, saying, \"Don't be alarmed. Remember, and do what we are doing.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1988, Diana Reed Slattery, quoting Terence McKenna, Xenolinguistics: Psychedelics, Language, and the Evolution of Consciousness, Berkeley, Calif.: Evolver Editions, North Atlantic Books, published 2015, →ISBN:",
          "text": "I found myself in the sort of auric equivalent of the Pope's private chapel, and there were insect elf machines proffering strange little tablets with strange writing on them. And it all went on, they were speaking in some kind of—there were these self-transforming machine-elf creatures—were speaking in some kind of colored language which condensed into rotating machines that were like Fabergé eggs, but crafted out of luminescent super-conducting ceramics, and liquid crystal gels, and all this stuff was so weird, and so alien, and so \"un-English-able\" that it was a complete shock.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994, Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, →ISBN, page 121:",
          "text": "Nearly everyone who smokes DMT reports hearing a high-pitched tone corresponding to what they believe is a ‘carrier wave’ of reality at that moment. The visual world begins to vibrate at the same frequency until everything breaks up into geometric patterns and crystalline twinkles. This is when the ‘machine elves’ show up, if they’re going to.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 1, Dan Carpenter, “The Invisible Landscape”, in A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience, Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, Inner Traditions – Bear & Company, published 2006, →ISBN, page 91:",
          "text": "There were times when I would watch this action for 45 minutes at a time … so long that the gravity of watching these melting Lego-beings (machine elves?) slice little pieces of themselves off, to create emotions and other information, was lost in boredom. (This has to be the machine elves. McKenna may have missed something by not investigating DXM—namely that the machine elf world appears to be self/brain.)",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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        "A kind of otherworldly humanoid figure sometimes seen during dimethyltryptamine (DMT) hallucinations."
      ],
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      "ipa": "/məˈʃiːn ɛlf/",
      "tags": [
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      "audio": "en-au-machine elf.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/70/En-au-machine_elf.ogg/En-au-machine_elf.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/En-au-machine_elf.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "machine elf"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.

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