Wrought

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“Wrought” is the archaic past participle of the very common word “work”, but I simply couldn’t bear to throw it away.

  • 01.075 They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
  • 12.013 gold wrought
  • 12.013 and unwrought,
  • 12.096 for it was wrought of pure silver
  • 13.037 wrought for some young elf-prince long ago.
  • 18.033 and gold, wrought and unwrought
  • 18.033 and gold, wrought and unwrought

Lade

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While the past participle “laden” is not archaic, the present form is!

  • 07.126 and he would lade them with food
  • 10.045 laden with rowers,
  • 11.003 each leading another pony heavily laden beside him;
  • 14.016 into laden boats
  • 19.004 O! Whither so laden,

“lade, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Kine

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The old plural of “cow”.  Some Middle English and earlier plurals were formed with and “n” ending (housen = houses, eyen = eyes, oxen).  This word appears in an elven poem, so it gets a double boost in register!

  • 09.053 Where the kine and oxen feed!

“kine, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Forebode

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“Bode” is archaic, but “forebode” is not.  I am fascinated.  Based on “bode” and since foreboding is certainly uncanny, I have given it a high tag.

  • 12.090 and his foreboding grew.
  • 14.007 You are always foreboding gloomy things!’

“bode, v.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

“forebode, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Uncanny

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Uncanny – in meaning 4 “not to be trusted as being associated with supernatural arts or powers” – made perfect sense as the opposite of canny – “wise and safe and to be trusted.”  Gandalf is both uncanny and canny in these senses, as he is wise and eminently trustable and good.  This word is a Scottish regionalism and here I am eating another slice of humble pie, as the word is used not for low effect but by painting the picture with mystery and magic, to heighten the passages.

  • 04.002 for the echoes were uncanny,
  • 06.065 and uncanny fire.
  • 08.006 in the enormous uncanny darkness.

“unˈcanny, adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Delve

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I am learning humility.

The word “delve” is labelled by the OED as northern and Scottish – and right up against Wales, one source says it is specifically to dig two spades deep.  Clearly that’s a regional, parochial word, one which I should by my own arbitrary rule tag as “low”.  It’s also in the middle of a rather high-register poem in a position rhyming with “elves”, which by any first approximation should make it be tagged “high”.  I have tagged it both.

  • 01.078 And harps of gold; where no man delves

“delve, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Special words: high and low

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In yesterday’s  7172 post, I made a plan to next address the words which have some special tag in the OED, such as obsolete, archaic, rare, dialectical, or jocular words.  Overnight, my plan jelled.  My goal from the beginning was to distinguish between words which are high-register and low, ignoring the middle ground for now.

I’m going to use the tag “high” on the very few obsolete words, the archaic words, the rare words, and other words which contribute to high register, as labeled by OED.

The tag “low” is going on parochial words, dialectical words, regional words, cuss words, jocular words.

By making tagged entries for each of these, we’ll be ready to move forward with our lexomics analysis while still making entries for other words.

Update 2015.06.20: tagging things “high” or “low” is an even less exact science than picking cherries… I have thrown in the towel on this one for now.

7172

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After removing The Ten Thousand most common words in written British English from the approximately 96,000 words of The Hobbit,  I took out those words such as “immeasurable” which are in the Ten Thousand when stripped to their base word (“measure”).  I had earlier reported the total remaining words as “Seven Thousand and Change“.  Since then I’ve spotted a few more words to eliminate for being common words with extra syllables.

At the moment, there are 7172, although that number may move a bit still.  We have entries for 1618 of them; 2,360 original Middle Earth words such as names are being held aside for later consideration.  So, for the remaining words, I plan to focus first on archaic and rare words, and poetical words and perhaps funny words because those seem to be the ones showing patterns of use.  I will certainly also take pleasure in finishing all the entries of a particular letter just for that satisfaction, and I have planned one or two more grammar explorations such as “be-” prefixes.

My technical support person (thank you, my son) will be able and willing to help me with the Lexomics portion of our analysis in June, therefore the focus on those words first.