Yammer

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It turns out that goblins and wolves yammer, as do dwarves in their presence.  Yammer, yelling or shouting, has an earlier obsolete meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary – specifically to make that noise in mourning and lamentation.  Yammering in The Hobbit occurs only in the context of goblins and wolves.

  • 04.021 Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
  • 04.022 and more than one of the dwarves were already yammering
  • 04.036 The yells and yammering,
  • 06.065 and yammering
  • 06.082 The wolves yammered

“yammer, v.”.  OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Wade

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Wade, a word whose root is found in both old Germanic languages and in Latin, used to be a strong verb in Middle English, “wade, wode, wad”.  “Swim” is among The Ten Thousand, but I note here that there’s no robust distribution difference between “wade” and “swim” in the text – there’s only one occurrence of “swim” after Chapter 9, just as there is none of “wade” after that point.

  • 05.011 Still he did not dare to wade out into the darkness.
  • 07.117 and shallow enough for me to wade
  • 08.012 and we daren’t try to wade or swim.’
  • 09.062 and waded ashore,

“wade, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Vagabond

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“Vagabond” comes from French and Latin vagus “wander”, and is related thus to “vague”.  “Wandering vagabond” is not quite redundant, however.  “Vagabond” has an unsavory connotation of lack of occupation or means, and is how the raft-elves describe the dwarves to the Master of Lake-town.

  • 10.031 wandering vagabond dwarves

“vagabond, adj. and n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Ugh

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This imitative interjection sounds just like what it means.  It doesn’t show up after Chapter 8.

  • 05.010 Ugh! (of the icy cold water in Gollum’s lake)
  • 05.051 Ugh!’ he said, (of a cold, clammy fish)
  • 07.035 Ugh! here they are!’ (Beorn of Gandalf and Bilbo)
  • 08.110 Ugh! (spiders responding to being cut by Sting)

“ugh, int. and n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Tablet

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Such an everyday thing as a tablet to write on can be found only in Chapter 1, our gateway from our world into the fantastical one of The Hobbit.

  • 01.024 unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet:

“tablet, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Sack

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In The Hobbit, sacks are either empty or full of dwarves.  They do not appear after chapter 8 except as a particle in Sackville-Baggins.

  • 02.072 and “a sack,
  • 02.072 a sack was over his head,
  • 02.075 pop! went a nasty smelly sack over his head,
  • 02.080 and popped a sack right over Thorin’s head
  • 02.075 With sacks
  • 02.077 sticking out of sacks to tell him
  • 02.078 in the bushes with sacks,” said he.
  • 02.080 in sacks,
  • 02.092 until at last they decided to sit on the sacks
  • 02.108 to untie the sacks
  • 06.046 and my stomach is wagging like an empty sack.’
  • 08.050 and hoist their empty sacks

Racket

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Both dwarves and river-elves cause rackets of the loud noise variety in The Hobbit.  OED gives it as possibily imitative

  • 02.042 at what he called “all this dwarvish racket,”
  • 09.029 Drat this dwarvish racket!’
  • 09.064 and there was a merry racket down by the river.

“racket, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 8 June 2015.

Quaff

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The Oxford English Dictionary gives for the etymology “origin unknown, perhaps imitative.”  Imitative of what?

  • 04.021 While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,

“quaff, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Oar

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“Oar” now occurs less frequently, though not by much, than its plural per the Google Ngram Viewer.  Before the mid-eighteenth century, this was not the case.  Predecessors of the word seem to come from Scandinavian tongues.

  • 08.027 There aren’t any oars.
  • 10.009 and oars were pulled,
  • 10.045 The white oars dipped

“oar, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.