Bilbo

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I had meant to leave the names alone for now, the words which Tolkien invented for the work, as that is the prerogative of every author.  Tolkien’s particularly gifted and fantastically expert touch with onomastics also means that the names he invented have been discussed and studied by folks far more scholarly than I am, and I wish to focus on more humble words.

Then this shot across my bows in the course of my professional life:

 A popular skill game in the 18th century it features a wooden ball cup game and the more challenging aspect of catching the hole in the ball on the end of the stick. Once you have mastered the bilbo any number of amazing possibilities may be opened to you.

Jas. Townsend & Son (op. cit) is a high-quality, well-researched company purveying toys, clothing, and other oddments to 18th-century American colonial re-enactors.

Update from the OED: Bilbo is a way of spelling a sword of “Bilbao”, Spain, compare Toledo or Damascus blades, and “Bilbo” was often the name of such a sword, especially as worn by a swashbuckler, or the swashbuckler himself who bears one.  For attestation we are given the phrase “bilbo’s the word” thusly: “1693   W. Congreve Old Batchelour iii. i. 24   Bilbo’s the Word, and Slaughter will ensue.”  It is also, in meaning two, an iron bar (possibly also of Bilbao steel) to which many sliding ankle shackles may be attached.

Aside from the fact that Tolkien read absolutely everything ever and probably knew the Congreve quote, we are certain that he encountered this word because Shakespeare used it and I’m certain that every syllable of Shakespeare passed in front of Tolkien’s eyes. “1602   Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor iii. v. 102   Crammed like a good bilbo, in the circomference Of a pack, Hilt to point.”

Prisoner and bold adventurer and rural, parochial amusement.  My admiration cannot be adequately expressed; my eyes are growing misty as I type.  Links to scholarly papers on this word will be welcome in the Comments.

The name “Bilbo” or the possessive “Bilbo’s” appears 555 times in the text of The Hobbit.  Here is the graph of the frequency of the occurrence of “Bilbo” over the course of the work.

“bilbo, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 June 2015.

“bilbo, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 June 2015.

Townsend, Jas. & Son, Inc. “Bilbo” Catalogue 35. Web.

Seven Thousand and Change

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During my first pass through the words of The Hobbit which are not in The Ten Thousand, I lemmatized about fifteen hundred as being inflected forms of words in The Ten Thousand.  We are left with seven thousand words to examine.  Tolkien invented many of these words, like “Thorin”  and “Mirkwood”.  Every author names his characters and locations, although the names may already be familiar to the readers, (“Spencer” and “Boston”), so these words don’t directly get at our question.  We will store them up safely in a separate sheet of my Great Spreadsheet of Doom and move on to our study of the non-naming yet non-common words.

Toes

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I am about to eliminate “toes”, as “toe” is in the Ten Thousand, but wanted to share a delicious tidbit.  We see “toes” twelve times before chapter ten and only twice thereafter.  I believe that, like “eyebrows”, toes are funny and just not the right tool for the job when the tale moves to high register.

  • 01.006 that reached nearly down to his woolly toes
  • 01.089 may the hair on his toes never fall out!
  • 02.060 and he picked him up by the toes
  • 02.065 Hold his toes
  • 02.080 and down to his toes.
  • 04.017 even than when the troll had picked him up by his toes.
  • 05.050 and fell on Bilbo’s toes.
  • 05.106 but suddenly he struck his toes on a snag
  • 05.133 he stubbed his poor toes again,
  • 06.046 My toes are all bruised
  • 06.086 when he looked down between his dangling toes
  • 08.043 sank back into his toes:
  • 16.011 I would give a good deal for the feel of grass at my toes.’
  • 19.028 as well known to him as his hands and toes.

Note that in chapter 16, as Bilbo has made up his mind to return things to rights, “toes” return; then again we have “toes” in chapter nineteen “when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred,”

Thag

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I am finding classes of words as I go, and I’m not sure whether to divide words more or less narrowly.  “Thag” is Tolkien’s spelling of Bilbo trying to say “thank” when he has a headcold.  It’s not onomatopoeia, but is it poetical?  It’s definitely word play.  Is it an accent, such as the trolls have (“yerself”)?  Or an idiolect, such as Gollum has (“sits with it a bitsy”)?  Is it merely a temporary mispronunciation?  Should I call these words common and not count them?  Or uncommon and include them?  I believe that Gollum, Bert, Tom, and William will have their own entries for just this purpose.  For now, I wish to include “thag” as I find it emphasizes the auditory quality of this tale.  Like sagas, The Hobbit is meant to be heard.  If we are lucky, we get to read it aloud to our children, as it was born these decades past.

  • 10.039  Thag you very buch.

Shod

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This evening, we enjoy “shod”, the perfect and past participle of “to shoe“.  Of course “shoe” is a member of The Ten Thousand. I am pleased that we have the ability to keep this uncommon form of this lovely strong verb.  I have discovered a fondness for strong verbs (sing, sang, had sung; sink, sank, had sunk; buy, bought) and particularly for those which used to be strong in the Early years of Modern English, but which have succumbed to the pressure of language simplification.  I imagine these words (seethe, sod, had sodden; thrive, throve, had thriven) remembering their glorious days of strength and beauty and hoping that their sacrifice has served the cause of literacy.  I salute those which remain strong.

  • 17.031  and they were shod with iron,

Orc

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I thought I had made a grievous error.  In scanning through the Os to find words to eliminate, I found “orcs” but not “orc”.  Baffled that “orc” would be in The Ten Thousand, I checked that list and found “force” and “divorce” but not “orc” by itself.  Frantic that I had mistaken “force” for “orc” at some point and eliminated them all, I raced to my backup copies of words and found the same thing.  The text confirms.  “Orcs” is used twice in the entire text and “orc” none at all, except in the compound word “Orcrist”.  The monsters in the mountains of this work are “goblins”.

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc ‘demon’, but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be ‘corruptions’. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in. The name has the form orch (pl. yrch) in Sindarin and uruk in the Black Speech.

The OED says that “orc” is more likely derived from ogre and cites a phrase in Beowulf –  “elves and orcs”.  OED credits Tolkien with reviving an obsolete word.  Because of Tolkien, the word is neither obsolete nor archaic.  Since he revived it, however, I am giving this word those tags.

05.133 the orcs of the mountains
07.151 and orcs of the worst description.

“orc, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Tolkien, J.R.R. (2014-02-21). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Kindle Locations 3759-3765). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Dursn’t

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Gollum has his own category of words, such as “iss” and “preciouss”, which would have been knocked out when the Python script eliminated The Ten Thousand most common words but for his speech impediment.  I have just crossed out another one which I believe deserves special mention.

Dursn’t is not simply the negative form of dare.  Google’s Ngram function reports that “dursn’t” and “dassn’t” were used in roughly the same proportion from 1800 until now – less than 20 times as frequently as “daren’t”.  Gollum uses a less common form, enhancing his hermit reputation.

  • 05.124 But we dursn’t go in,
  • 05.124 no we dursn’t.

I will find out if any of my local libraries subscribe to the OED on line in order to better research the antiquity of words.  If not, I will be taking advantage in May of the OED’s free 30 day trial – more answers then.

OED update!  The word history of “dare” is a fascinating rabbit hole and I highly recommend it as summer reading.  The letter S plays a merry game of hide-and-seek in this word.  “Durst” is given as a past tense, co-equal with “dared” and listed first which I believe means that it is attested as older – it’s also tagged as colloquial in some uses.  Is Gollum using it in the present tense?

Leant

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We must also say farewell to “leant” as the perfect form of “lean”.  Although it sounds old to my ears, Google’s Ngram viewer tells me that it was in fairly robust use from 1870 through 1930, so I believe I must not call it archaic.  It’s in the category, I believe, of “dreamt”, a word of my mother’s.  In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary teaches us that “leant” is the straightforward past participle (note that Tolkien does not use it participally in the sample below.  Intriguing).  As “lean” is solidly in the Ten Thousand most common words, away it goes, along with leapt!

Note also that now I have discovered Google’s Ngram viewer.  Someone feed my kids, I have more exciting things to play with!

• 08.001  that leant together,

“lean, v.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 June 2015.

Immeasurable

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Now, “measure” is in the Ten Thousand most common words.  Is “immeasurable” part of that lemma?  I think it is, word fans, although it has both a prefix and an suffix trying to disguise it.  You see how craftily the words are hiding?  Also, we have made it to the letter I on our first pass.  I have included “immeasurable” as an uncommon word until we have thought over just how finely to separate out our words.  Wouldn’t want it to get lost!

  • 12.014  with wings folded like an immeasurable bat.