EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR GNOME
Then poor Bornier, who resembled a Breton gnome, came up to me.
It was the unlucky boat, the boat that was haunted by the gnome.
"It's like a fairy-tale, and going into the gnome's hill," fluttered Magsie.
The gnome picked up my bag, but was interrupted by my new friend.
"Well, you wait and see what sort of a bubble I'll blow," replied the Gnome.
"Wait," cried the Gnome, as Ned leaned over to drink the cool water.
As they neared the brook that ran through the meadow, the Gnome paused.
To his dismay, what the Gnome had said was, indeed, too true.
"Be careful," admonished the Gnome, as he and Ned descended the rough flight.
It was like a gnome guiding a fairy into some mine of wealth.
WORD ORIGIN
"dwarf-like earth-dwelling spirit," 1712, from French gnome, from Modern Latin gnomus, used 16c. in a treatise by Paracelsus, who gave the name pigmaei or gnomi to elemental earth beings, possibly from Greek *genomos "earth-dweller" (cf. thalassonomos "inhabitant of the sea"). A less-likely suggestion is that Paracelsus based it on the homonym that means "intelligence" (preserved in gnomic). Popular in children's literature 19c. as a name for red-capped German and Swiss folklore dwarfs. Garden figurines first imported to England late 1860s from Germany.