Goblins

Goblins are the smallest of the Goblinoid morphemes. In a mixed community they typically form a technical caste, while independent goblin tribes often live underground, or at least to make their homes in caverns or burrows where they can avoid the attention of larger creatures. They favour cramped networks of winding and intersecting tunnels, where their small size and nimbleness give them an advantage (in particular, over larger goblinoids.)
Goblins are as adaptable socially as they are physically, but they struggle to be accepted into other cultures thanks to a largely undeserved reputation for meanness and short tempers. Despite this, they will tend to ape other local cultures in an attempt to find acceptance and protection, a social habit dating back to the days of the Horde. Whatever social structures they adopt tend to be built around the kedin, an extended family/work unit who share living space, typically all undertake similar work, sharing equally in labour and its rewards, and raise their children communally. They have little concept of parenthood, instead viewing children as a product and responsibility of the community.
Larger social structures are formed of multiple kedin working together. These structures are organised through negotiation and mediation, in particular by the respected individuals known as bizans. Often equated with magistrates or judges, they are learned in goblin customs and skilled at easing tension and resolving problems. Individuals can move freely between kedin, and alliances are again by negotiation, never by marriage, a concept somewhat alien to goblin culture.
Outcasts and renegades from proper society sometimes form a nedik, a dysfunctional social group created for mutual gain and protection, and alternately pitied and feared by respectable goblins. Where kedin develop social hierarchies based on experience and respect, nidek tend to have autocratic leaderships based on wealth or fear. When people talk about the viciousness of goblins, they are usually thinking of nidek.

Goblins and Identity

Goblins do not distinguish between male and female, let alone recognising a broader, non-binary concept of gender identity, and most use it/its as pronouns. They have very few sexual hangups - in a social setting, goblins tend to sleep communcally, freely making advances and withdrawing them if rebuffed on pain of rejection from the kedin - and with the exception of the issig (‘bone-menders’, a term used broadly for all goblin healthcare professionals,) don’t really understand how children happen. For all their reputation for spite and savagery, they are in fact highly liberal, even innocent in many ways.
The most important element of goblin identity is their social status. Those who are members of a kedin are known as kedik, those with no kedin are ondik, while the kidek are members of the quasi-criminal nediks.

Goblin Backslang

A peculiarity of goblin language, sometimes adopted by their neighbours, is their use of backslang. Words are reversed to denote their opposite, in particular used as a way to name bad things without giving them the power of their own word. They do this both in their own tongue - agitators and troublemakers are often known as nazib (bizan backwards), as nedik are the opposite of the civilised kedin - and in others. Reversed insults are often used affectionately. Things that are considered absolute are always given a word that is a palindrome.