hyphen

Efficiency

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Once upon a time, I had a fancy to hold aside the hyphenated words and do a mini-lesson on them – there are dozens and dozens, and I believe now that the most important thing is to get the concordance functional!

Update 2015.07.10: the concordance is functional, I’m publishing conclusions on my main topics, and I had time to run a graph of hyphens!

Update 2017.09.27: I’m so pleased to say we now have a Hyphen Mini-Concordance and all of the words therein have been checked against the OED to see what those venerable editors think of the hyphen.

Torchlight

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“Torchlight” is a less-common than 10,000 word – and “torch-light” is less common than the first 100,000.  I am fascinated that both appear side by side in Chapter 9.

  • 09.003 well behind their torch-light
  • 09.005 with red torch-light,
  • 09.011 in torchlight)
  • 09.022 taking the torchlight with them
  • 13.044 and far beyond the reach of their torch-light.

Two-word word, one word, or hyphenated are all acceptable in OED.

“ˈtorch-ˌlight, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/203510. Accessed 21 September 2017.

Vocables

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I learned many years ago from Professor Catriona Parsons that Gàidhlig waulking songs, the work songs which keep the rhythm for hand-fulling woolen cloth, are full of “vocables”.  In the first song in the linked video, the group’s words between the solo lines are vocables.

“These are not like fa-la-la,” she said. “They are very ancient sounds and they have meaning, but we have lost the meaning.”

She then taught us very carefully to pronounce these syllables, which usually alternate in the songs with phrases in current lexical use, just as she had heard them growing up on the Isle of Lewis.  I fancied that it did not matter if we knew the meaning, as long as those to whom we sang could understand.

Similarly, what’s up with tra-la-la-lally?  Corey Olsen, The Tolkien Professor, makes this point: ” tra-la-la-lally
here down in the valley!” [03.014] sounds very much like “tra-la-la-lally” is the name of the thing which is happening down in the valley.  These vocables are definitely sound play, only spoken by elves.  Do these sounds make those singers a bit alien?  Do they remind us that they speak other languages natively?  I believe they do.  In honor of the play of sound-on-sound in these vocables, I am giving them the ‘Onomatopoeia” tag.

  • 03.014 O! tra-la-la-lally
  • 03.015 O! tril-lil-lil-lolly
  • 19.002 Come! Tra-la-la-lally!
  • 19.003 O! Tra-la-la-lally
  • 19.004 Fa-la!
  • 19.004 Fa-la-la-lally
  • 19.004 With Tra-la-la-lally
  • 19.004 Tra-la-la-lally

I am separating out the Non-Lexical-Vocables after a bloody morning of trying to find a more suitable word. Haven’t found one yet, might have to ask my fellow scholar Jamie Stinnett.

  • 06.077 Ya hey!
  • 06.078 Ya hey!
  • 06.078 Ya harri-hey!
  • 06.078 Ya hoy!
  • 06.079 And with that Ya Hoy!

Rat-tat

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Not only a word in its own right, it’s imitative and “reduplicative” – which means that “rat-tat-tat-tash” is considered the same word, just lengthened out for more sound effects.

  • 01.047 but a hard rat-tat on the hobbit’s beautiful green door.

“rat-tat, n., int., and adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.

Tomnoddy

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“Tomnoddy” means a foolish or stupid person and Tolkien says right there in the text that it’s an insult.  We’re tagging it as “low”.  Trivia, Tom-Noddy is also a local name for a the puffin (Fratercula arctica).  Notice something that Tolkien does now and then?  He has made a compound word out of a hyphenated one (click here for our discussion of making hyphenated words out of two singles).  There are more examples which we will be interested in later, and these feed my theory of Tolkien reminding us that he is merely translating from Bilbo’s Westron writings.

  • 08.097 Old Tomnoddy,
  • 08.097 Old Tomnoddy can’t spy me!
  • 08.098 and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.

“Tom-noddy, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.

Zig-zag

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“Zig-zag” is first attested in English as a garden path layout in 1712.  Its earliest appearance is in German (zickzack), indicating a proper path toward a siege so that the defenders don’t have a clear shot at the besiegers.  In The Hobbit, the term describes the path into well-hidden and well-fortified Rivendell.

  • 03.012 in the dusk down the steep zig-zag path

OED reports that it can be two words, one word, or hyphenated.

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