SHORT GLOSSARY OF OBSOLETE, ARCHAIC, AND RARE WORDS

Written a little while ago, I composed this when I was a deep lover of Tolkien and his writing.

SHORT GLOSSARY OF OBSOLETE, ARCHAIC, AND RARE WORDS

BY KOLBE FLOOD

   

   Now in Tolkien’s works, he used different languages in his writing. In some of his familiar works, one sees the strange writing on the title page of the Hobbit, the strange carven image in the stone door of the Mines of Moria, the mysterious names in the Silmarillion, and many more queer feats of language found throughout his works. Overall, he has composed fourteen languages. These words collected here are what he also used, along with his languages, in his book entitled The Book of Lost Tales, his first completed letters or the shaping of a book, before the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and even the Silmarillion. This work was edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. Says he, ‘The Book of Lost Tales, written between sixty and seventy years ago, was the first substantial work of imaginative literature of by J. R. R. Tolkien, and the first emergence in narrative of the Valar, of the Children of Iluvatar, Elves and Men, of Dwarves and the Orcs, and of the lands in which their history is set, Valinor beyond the western ocean, Middle-earth, the ‘Great Lands’ between the seas of the east and west. Some fifty-seven years after my father ceased to work on the Lost Tales, The Silmarillion, profoundly transformed from its distant forerunner, was published; and six years have passed since then.’

   With that being said, he used these words below in his Book the Lost Tales, and possibly other works. And these are words that have been used in the past that have been lost, and cannot be regained unless the we start to use them again. For once a word, it will always a word.       

An if

arrassed covered with arras(rich figured tapestry)

astonied stunned, astonished

bason formerly common spelling of basin

bent open place covered with grass

brakes thickets

charger large dish

clamant clamorous, noisy

clomb old past tense of climb

constellate formed into a constellation

cools coolness

corbel basket

covetice (inordinate) desire, covetousness

eld old age

fain gladly, diposed, desirous

fain of well-pleased with

fane temple

fey The old senses were ‘fated, approaching death; presaging death’. It seems very unlikely that the later sense ‘possessing or displaying magical, fairy-like, or unearthly qualities’

flittermice bats

go move, in the phrase all creatures that go

houseleek a fleshy plant that grows on the walls and roofs of houses

inaureoled surrounded with a halo

jacinth blue

lampads The words in only recorded in the O.E.D. of the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne of God in the Book of Revelation.

lets upon gives on to, opens on to

lief gladly, willingly, 

liever more gladly, more willingly, rather

lustihead vigour

meed requital

minished reduced, diminished

or…or either…or

or yet apparently means ‘already’

ousel blackbird, (now spelt ouzel, in Ring-ouzel and other bird-names)

pleasance ‘A pleasure-ground, usually attached to a mansion; sometimes a secluded part of a garden, but more often a separate enclosure laid out with shady walks, trees and shrubs…’ (O.E.D) This sense is present in pleasa(u)nces, but in rest and pleasance the sense is ‘enjoyment, pleasment’; in nor did he have lack of pleasance either meaning may be intended, but I think probably the former.

pled old past tense of plead

plenilune the time of full moon

pricks (spurs his horse), rides fast

reacked troubled, cared

rede counsel, advice; plan

redes counsels

rondured (in golden-rondured) Rondure ‘circle, rounded form’; rondured is not recorded

ruth matter of sorrow, calamity; distress, grief; remorse; in the greatest ruth was that to [the Valar] thereafter; the sense is unclear: ‘matter of sorrow or regret’, or possibly  ‘harm, ill’.

saps deep diggings

sate old past tense of sit

seamews seagulls

selenites inhabitants of the Moon

shallop This word had precise applications to particular kinds of boat, but here apparently means ‘open boat propelled by oars and sail’

share share=ploughshare, but used here of the blade of a scythe.

sledge-blows blows as of a sledge, a large heavy hammer

sprent past participle of the lost verb sprenge ‘sprinkle, scatter’

spirite(s) spirit(s)

suaded persuaded

trillups trillaping; this word is not recorded in any dictionary available, a word with a lost meaning. 

umbraged (in wide-umbraged) Umbraged ‘shaded, shadowed’, but here shown in the sense ‘shadowing’, ‘casting a shade’.

web(s) woven fabric, (also used in senses ‘webbed feet’, and ‘cobwebs’)

whickering (whickering sparks). The verb whicker meant to laugh or titter, or of a horse to whinny, but the O.E.D. cites a line from Masefield the wall-top grasses whiskered in the breeze, and the 1920 Supplement to the Dictionary gives a meaning ‘to make a hurtling sound’, with a single citation where the word is used of a thunderbolt whickering through the sky. In the 1962 version of The Man in the Moon the word whickering occurs in this verse.

whitehorn hawthorn

wildered perplexed, bewildered

wrack devastation, ruin (cf. (w)rack and ruin)

This are the words that are lost. Tolkien revived them, or tried to. The only way they can be revived is that people start to use them again: in free-lance writing, in books, and soon they will be revived, and they will come back.