stylistic:style_transfer, stylistic:tone
Meanings

The word may have been coined as a compound of the roots lú or laghu (from Greek: ἐ-λαχύ "small") and corp (from Latin: corpus "body"), or so it had been suggested by Whitley Stokes. Research published in 2019 suggests the word derives from the Luperci and associated Roman festival of Lupercalia.

Folk etymology derives the word from leith (half) and bróg (brogue), because of the frequent portrayal of the leprechaun as working on a single shoe, as evident in the alternative spelling leithbrágan.