Rust error E0573: expected type, found variant `Dragon::Born`

The compiler team's explanation

Something other than a type has been used when one was expected.

Erroneous code examples:

enum Dragon {
    Born,
}

fn oblivion() -> Dragon::Born { // error!
    Dragon::Born
}

const HOBBIT: u32 = 2;
impl HOBBIT {} // error!

enum Wizard {
    Gandalf,
    Saruman,
}

trait Isengard {
    fn wizard(_: Wizard::Saruman); // error!
}

In all these errors, a type was expected. For example, in the first error, if we want to return the Born variant from the Dragon enum, we must set the function to return the enum and not its variant:

enum Dragon {
    Born,
}

fn oblivion() -> Dragon { // ok!
    Dragon::Born
}

In the second error, you can't implement something on an item, only on types. We would need to create a new type if we wanted to do something similar:

struct Hobbit(u32); // we create a new type

const HOBBIT: Hobbit = Hobbit(2);
impl Hobbit {} // ok!

In the third case, we tried to only expect one variant of the Wizard enum, which is not possible. To make this work, we need to using pattern matching over the Wizard enum:

enum Wizard {
    Gandalf,
    Saruman,
}

trait Isengard {
    fn wizard(w: Wizard) { // ok!
        match w {
            Wizard::Saruman => {
                // do something
            }
            _ => {} // ignore everything else
        }
    }
}

From rustc --explain E0573 (1.99.0), part of the Rust project, MIT or Apache-2.0. Official page.