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The word was popularized, especially in the United States, by the children’s novel The Gremlins (1943) by the British author Roald Dahl (1916–1990), in which gremlins sabotage Royal Air Force aircraft in revenge for the destruction of their forest home to make way for an aircraft factory; the creatures later join forces with the British to fight the Nazis.
1963, Arthur C Clarke, chapter 8, in Glidepath, New York: Simon and Schuster, pages 72-73:
Like Abominable Snowmen, gremlins have never actually been seen; but nobody who works with electronic gear doubts the existence of these mischievous and elusive entities. There are too many malfunctions and failures that can have no other explanation.
2023 November 29, Richard Foster, “Tyne & Wear Metro goes with the flow”, in RAIL, number 997, page 34:
Crucial time was saved by the fact Nexus didn't require a Transport & Works Act. Nevertheless, other gremlins kept raising their heads.
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2019; “gremlin, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
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