-elchen
German, suffix
-elchen is spelled E-L-C-H-E-N (6 letters) and appears about once in every 7 million words in written German, the 136,587th most frequent German word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). -elchen is a German neuter suffix meaning “used to make diminutives of nouns with a stem ending in -ch, and a few with a stem ending in -g” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). On this page, Elchen is a different word: “dative plural of Elch”. The German Wiktionary defines it as “Variante (linguistischer Begriff: Allomorph) zu -chen: Wortbildungselement der Verkleinerung (Bestandteil von…”.
What does -elchen mean in English?
suffix
- 1
neuterused to make diminutives of nouns with a stem ending in -ch, and a few with a stem ending in -g.
Strichelchen
- 2
neuterused to make diminutives of words with other final sounds, particularly -k and -ng.
Säckelchen
noun
- 1
masculinedative plural of Elch
Source: English Wiktionary, German section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How German dictionaries define it
suffix: 1. Variante (linguistischer Begriff: Allomorph) zu -chen: Wortbildungselement der Verkleinerung (Bestandteil von Diminutivformen), das sächliche Substantive bildet
The definition in the German Wiktionary, in German.
Source: German Wiktionary, dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
How common is -elchen in German?
-elchen appears about once in every 7 million words in written German.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).