A Smurf is a small blue humanoid creature that wears a funny hat. "The Smurfs", an animated cartoon, describes the life and times of a small village of smurfs. "Small" being the operative word - their houses are generally made out of mushrooms.

Their social interaction is marked by the following odd behaviours: Each smurf has a task or trade, and is named after it. Thus the smurf in charge of food production is named Chef Smurf, the village handyman is Handy Smurf, and so on. The other name-rule is a primary attribute-based name. There is Clumsy Smurf, Lazy Smurf, and so on. There are also untold numbers of Generic Smurfs who just do whatever the hell it is that generic smurfs do.

A particularly notable feature of the Smurf language is that "smurf" is also a verb, and obvious permutations are adjectives, adverbs, or pretty much any grammatical entity. "Smurf the smurfy smurfoid smurfer into that smurfing smurfed-out smurfable" would appear to be a valid sentence, and be understandable by any random Smurf.

Other than the Smurfs, there are at least two main characters: Gargamel the evil wizard who likes eating smurfs, and his cat, Azrael, who likes the same.