Bottle

“Bottle” seems to be a diminutive of “butt”, a cask for wine or ale.

  • 01.058 By the time he had got all the bottles
  • 01.063 each with a bottle on the top,
  • 01.064 Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
  • 09.063 and a leather bottle of wine
  • 09.063 but the bottle helped him to do that,

“bottle, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 25 March 2016.

Salad

It goes so well with pork-pie!  OED defines a salad thus:

1. a. A cold dish of herbs or vegetables (e.g. lettuce, endive), usually uncooked and chopped up or sliced, to which is often added sliced hard-boiled egg, cold meat, fish, etc., the whole being seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

The word ultimately comes from the Latin for “salt”.

  • 01.055 and salad,’ said Bombur.

“salad, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 25 March 2016.

Wine

Most of the wine, bless it, is in Mirkwood.  Wine-barrel, of course, has its own uncommon entry.

  • 01.051 A little red wine,
  • 01.065 Splash the wine on every door!
  • 01.090 all praise to his wine
  • 09.018 were very fond of wine,
  • 09.018 The wine,
  • 09.019 he learned how the wine
  • 09.023 and taste the new wine that has just come in.
  • 09.025 It must be potent wine to make a wood-elf drowsy;
  • 09.025 but this wine,
  • 09.035 The wine of Dorwinion brings deep
  • 09.048 and his best wine
  • 09.063 and a leather bottle of wine
  • 18.048 I have drunk much of your wine

Coffee

The word “coffee” probably comes to us from Turkish, but before that the origins of the word are obscured in Arabic or Ethiopian origin.  Caffeea arabica is native to the Arabian peninsula and Ethiopia.

Tolkien does not refer to coffee outside of chapter 1, nor in The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, or even in The Father Christmas Letters.  I assume that he enjoyed coffee from reading Letter 332 to his son Michael describing a flat that Merton College of Oxford provided him:

(7) The use of 2 beautiful common-rooms (at a distance of 100 yards) with free writing paper, free newspapers, and mid-morning coffee. It all sounds too good to be true (Kindle Locations 8842-8843)

To be honest, this mention of coffee – made from a tropics-loving plant which probably couldn’t grow in the Shire – I count as more evidence that Tolkien told this tale to his children (at least the beginning chapters) right off the cuff.  Dwarf names he already knew and which didn’t match the world the story later turned out to inhabit, coffee which he might have wanted as a guest at supper but which didn’t match the botany of that land.  “Papa, tell us another story.”  Yes, little ones.  I will always tell you another story and dredge it up out of any word-hoard that my young-parent-tired brain can access.  Pass the coffee, please.

  • 01.046 and one for coffee,
  • 01.047 A big jug of coffee had just been set
  • 01.056 and coffee,

“coffee, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 25 March 2016.

Supper

In a search for “sup” and its forms, only “supper” is found.  The uncommon “supper-time” is found in its own entry.

  • 01.046 and whether they would all stay to supper.
  • 01.061 I suppose you will all stay to supper?’
  • 02.031 and Thorin muttered something about supper,
  • 02.035 and there was mighty little left for supper,
  • 02.037 and anything was better than little supper,
  • 02.059 who had already had a fine supper,
  • 02.063 if only you won’t have me for supper.”
  • 02.064 He had already had as much supper as he could hold;
  • 03.024 Supper is preparing over there,” he said.
  • 03.026 But the dwarves were all for supper
  • 06.038 or we shall be made into supper,
  • 06.092 and to begin to think of being torn up for supper like a rabbit,
  • 07.090 but you deserve a supper for the story all the same.
  • 07.094 There they had a supper,
  • 07.113 and the dwarves were having supper,
  • 07.115 and none till after supper!
  • 09.062 He no longer thought twice about picking up a supper uninvited
  • 16.012 and for a soft bed after a good supper!