How did I get in my head that the book’s total word count is 27,000? In trying to replicate everything, I found I made this error a few times. Grievous error. There are just over 96,000 words in The Hobbit. Good thing I caught it now!
Update 2015.06.20: I believe I have corrected all the countings and mathings up to this point. Word Fans, please let me know if you see an error!
There are forty three separate food words, about half as many as there are sound words. They are repeated for a total of 125 food words, about one-third as many as there are sound words. I have heard frequently about the food imagery – how it expressed the Baggins side of our reluctant hero – but not much if ever about the sound words. Hmmm. Is this a function of many food words being in the Ten Thousand? Is it also a function of the sound words acting more subtly on us?
I am using the tag “archaic” to two purposes. First, if the OED calls a word “archaic”, then “archaic” it is tagged! Second, I am using it as an umbrella term to embrace the obsolete words and the rare words as well (as they are labeled by OED). One tag to mean “old”. If you see “rare” or “obsolete”, know that that’s the dictionary’s primary classification of the word in question (not that there aren’t a few words which have earned many different OED labels!).
Last weekend’s task, extending to today, is double-checking the accuracy of our tags. I’m choosing one where two are closely related, two where I seem to have used one for different things on different days, making sure that every post has at least one tag.
All of this is preparation for tagging the original text in preparation for using Michael Drout’s fascinating lexomics software! My goal is to see if Tech Support’s app works to replace several different words with the same tag, and if so to make at least my first lexomics run!
“Firework”, singular, is outside of The Hundred Thousand. OED tells us that in its meaning as “a pyrotechnic display” although the plural “fireworks” only is used now, the singular used to be used. Most instances in The Hobbit are of “fireworks” except one. The uninflected form could be the older form for the meaning just cited – or could be the form indicating other, obsolete meanings of “firework” (work done in fire, a furnace, and others). Of course… Tolkien uses it in paragraph 01.091 adjectivally, to describe the glare of the blue light on Gandalf’s staff. OED admits of no adjectival uses, except as the first element in some hyphenated word phrases. The word we know is tweaked so very gently off the rails – we can take nothing for granted, yet we do not know consciously that we have been alerted. Absolutely elegant.
“ˈfire-work | ˈfirework, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 5 June 2015.
Today, June 3, 2015, I made a proofreading run through all of the posts so far. I checked spelling, formatting, grammar, syntax, logic. I updated old posts which had incorrect numbers. I fixed tags and added tags; for example, I made sure to add the tag “100K” to those entries which had been made before those outside of the Hundred Thousand were discovered. It has been a delicious day of review and synthesis.
Now I will sleep on all these lovely words which I have gathered up as Smaug did his gold and let them work their way into my dreams and thoughts until they and their patterns are as known to me as every gleaming cup in the treasure-hoard.
Two classes of words remain unrecorded which were in the My Goodness post: compound words and those whose inflections as used in The Hobbit are actually within the Hundred Thousand. As none of them are obsolete or archaic, or food words, or onomatopoeia, I will get to them when next I enter individual words. Those three categories seem to be the best ones to move forward with to the next phase: Lexomics.
Also, bless them, the home servers for this blog seem to be at least four hours east of New Hampshire, as this post has been given a date stamp of June 4th. We run on New Hampshire time at Signum University, however, so I’ll let my date notation of June 3d stand.
Donkeys have earned the “food” tag, as goblins and Smaug consider them tasty.
Although “wobbly” is among the Hundred Thousand, “wobble” is not. It always shows vulnerability and adds a laugh in this work.
Poor Bilbo was betrayed by a headcold noise while trying to hide among the barrel-guiding river people.
“snivel, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.
Not Scottish but Irish in origin, I gave it the Scottish tag temporarily as “from within the United Kingdom, but alien”. It means, of course, “little smithers”, particles or atoms, and has not been observed as a singular in the wild.
“smithereens, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.
“ˈsmithers, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.
words that you were saying 