halfling

half +‎ -ling. Sense 3 ("half-grown young person") is attested to 1794. It was then used by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings (1954) as an alternative reference to members of his hobbit race. Hobbits were used in the original 1974 releases of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, but in later editions they were changed to "halflings" for legal reasons, as being a pre-existing word rather than one invented by Tolkien.

halfling (plural halflings)

1. (fantasy) A fictional small humanoid creature featuring in fantasy fiction; a hobbit.
2. (fantasy) A fictional humanoid born of a human parent and a parent of another race in fantasy fiction.
3. A half-grown person, between a child and an adult.
   • 1897, Lady's Realm: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, volume 1, page 52:

     Often it had been my fate to accompany the pick of the knight errantry of Whinnyliggate on such quests—for, though Nance was about my own age, she had become a reigning belle while I was but a halfling boy.

• Finghall