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PlainSpell

kelpie

noun

kelpie is a noun meaning “A malevolent shapeshifting spirit, most often in the form of a horse, believed to haunt the rivers and lochs of Scotland” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled K-E-L-P-I-E, and it appears about once in every 11 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of kelpie is kelpies.

What does kelpie mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A malevolent shapeshifting spirit, most often in the form of a horse, believed to haunt the rivers and lochs of Scotland.

  2. 2

    An Australian breed of sheepdog.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce kelpie?

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-kelpie.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of kelpie

  • kelpies plural
  • kelpy

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is kelpie?

Kelpie appears about once in every 11 million words in written English, the 101,613th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Kelpie in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchkelpie (spirit), australian kelpie (sheepdog)
GermanKelpie (spirit), Australian Kelpie (sheepdog)
Spanishkelpie australiano (sheepdog)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does kelpie come from?

Possibly from Scottish Gaelic cailpeach or colpach, meaning "colt"; recorded earliest in a placename (Kelpie hoall, Kirkcudbrightshire) in 17th century. The dog breed, from 1889, derives from the name shared by the first two breeding bitches (dam and pup) in Victoria, Australia, which in turn derives from the mythological spirit.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).