Gremlin

So imagine you have a big box of toys. You love playing with these toys and you always keep them in order. But one day, a little creature sneaks into your room and starts messing with your toys. It throws some toys around, hides others, and generally makes a mess. That little creature is kind of like a gremlin!

Now, a gremlin isn't a real creature like a dog or a cat. It's just something people made up to explain why things sometimes don't work right. Sometimes when a machine or a car doesn't work correctly, people say it's because a gremlin got inside and messed with it.

So a gremlin is kind of like a mischievous sprite that likes to mess things up. And even though they're not real, people still talk about them to explain why things go wrong sometimes.