archaic

Bewilder

lfsaldenbirch , ,

The word uses the intensifier function of “be-” to strengthen the lost-ness of archaic verb “wilder” – to lose one’s way or be pathless.  It’s in common use, although the root verb is archaic.  Wouldn’t that be a lovely word to encounter in a story?  Wildered?  We do have wilderland and wilderness coming up.  After all, we “are come to the very edge of the Wild,” (03.006).

  • 01.048 and altogether bewildered
  • 05.148 while bewildered goblins were still picking up
  • 17.025 so strong was the bewilderment of the treasure upon him,
  • 18.021 and bewildered among their foes.

“bewilder, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 6 May 2015.

Benight

lfsaldenbirch , , , , ,

“Benight” uses be- in its capacity as a Maker of Verbs with the sense of surround.

  • 06.026 so that they often caught people benighted near their gates.

The derivative adjective “benighted”carries the metaphorical connotation of having been morally corrupted.  Tolkien uses it here, however, in its old meaning.  Goblins caught travellers who had become surrounded by night.  The OED tells us that this meaning is obsolete, although we find it perfectly understandable.

“benighted, adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 7 May 2015.

a-

lfsaldenbirch ,

Frank Burroughs, my undergraduate Old English professor, had a spectacular gift for pointing out the continuity between the forms of the language he taught us and the language we students spoke.  “Maybe you had an auntie who said X,” he would say, “which is a nineteenth century form of Y, which is clearly a bit of Middle English hanging on in remote areas.  It descends from this Old English lesson we are about to address…”

The a- prefix before the gerund, he taught us, holds on from the Old English form of on+ gerund.  It is used in The Hobbit only by the Trolls, the Tra-la-la-lally Elves, and one of the spiders of Mirkwood.  These characters are respectively low-class, centuries old, and remote (as well as non-human).  They are “not us”, and their language doesn’t quite match ours.

  • a-thinkin’     02.045 “What the ‘ell William was a-thinkin’ of
  • a-sneakin’   02.060 are there any more of your sort a-sneakin’
  • a-arguing    02.084 “Who’s a-arguing?” said William,
  • a-talkin’       02.104 “Who are you a-talkin’ to?”
  • a-wagging   03.016 With beards all a-wagging?
  • a-struggling 08.087 I saw one a-struggling just now.
  • a-roaming    19.003 So why go a-roaming?

I note that these characters only speak in Chapters 2, 3, 8, and 19, and I believe that they contribute to my predicted pattern of low register at the beginning and high register in Chapter 10 and after.  Yet!  We have seen the tra-la-la-lally elves defy the prediction before.  Perhaps the beauty of the words reveals deeper complexity!  As I wondered in the Poetry post: does Tolkien return us to pre-chapter-10 register at the end of the work as Bilbo comes home?

Only the Trolls use the combination of a- and dropping the terminal g – but they do not use it all the time.  The Trolls also do not use the a- with all their gerunds.

I’ll use the tag “archaic” to track our old-fashioned forms for now.  My imagination tells me that archaic forms are of high register… yet clearly the Trolls and spiders are not.  The tra-la-la-lally elves are, of course, beyond mortal ken.  Will we be able to distinguish between “old-fashioned and therefore only country bumpkins use it” and “old-fashioned and therefore courtly and high-register”?

Only “a-wagging” from the Elves has a headword among the Uncommon Words and has made it into the concordance!

“a, prep.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

Burroughs, F. G., Jr. Old English. Bowdoin College. Autumn, 1984. Lecture.

Orc

lfsaldenbirch , , , ,

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.