The meaning “spider” has been attested since the 1600s, but the OED conjectures that it is a back formation from “Cobweb”, with roots meaning “grab” ultimately the same as the slang word “cop” for “police officer”.
“† cob, n.4.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2015. Web. 4 October 2015.
This word for the fur of a rabbit was rare in the 18th and 19th centuries then boomed again with the booming fur-trade of the later 19th century. As a work-related word, we are tagging it as low, as Bilbo seems to do when at first trying to wrap his head around whether Beorn as a “skin changer” is a person of lower station than himself.
“coney, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.
Once again, Tolkien made a compound word where English has none. Of the three types of flowering plans called “rock rose” in the OED, two are obsolete and rare.
“rock rose, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.
“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.
“Tom-noddy, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.
The OED calls this a rare word, not archaic, when used in its figurative sense, as here:
“Aback” is “backward from the action” and to take aback, therefore, is to discomfit. The “a-” prefix here is a descendant of the unaccented prefix “on-“, a particle which forms verbs, adverbs, and prepositions with the sense of “on”.
“a-, prefix3.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 16 May 2015.
“aback, adv.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 16 May 2015.
“take, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 16 May 2015.
words that you were saying 