word

Bracken

lfsaldenbirch ,

I have learned something – “bracken” is always ferns.

  • 06.041 among the bracken
  • 06.045 At times they were pushing through a sea of bracken
  • 06.070 Yellowing bracken, fallen branches,
  • 06.072 and bracken.

“bracken, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 28 July 2015.

Bowstring

lfsaldenbirch , , ,

“Bowstring” is approximately the 67,700th most common word in the Gutenberg corpus, “bow-string” is not found in the 100K!  Each is used once, and in very different settings.  I am intrigued that Bilbo’s word that he thinks of internally to indicate his state of anxiety is not hyphenated, while the name for the tool that Bard used is.  Not a Shire word, then, yet expressed as a specialty word that Tolkien (translator) had no word for – different from a bowstring.  Perhaps the greater bow of a mighty man had a different sort of string.

OED does give “bowstring” the head word and “bow-string” in the examples.

  • 05.127 Bilbo could see or feel that he was tense as a bowstring,
  • 14.021 Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear.

“bow-string | bowstring, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017. Web. 5 September 2017.

Boulder

lfsaldenbirch , ,
  • 04.002 Boulders, too, at times came galloping down the mountain-sides,
  • 06.005 and suddenly he saw peering between two big boulders
  • 06.040 and the long grasses between the boulders,
  • 07.102 there black and dark lay boulders stark
  • 11.006 and splashing among many boulders,
  • 12.022 cringing under boulders,
  • 13.064 and most of its stones were now only boulders

Bough

lfsaldenbirch ,

First it meant “shoulder”, then by extension limb and limb of a tree, then the “shoulder” use faded away, remaining in only a few northern patches of Britain.

  • 06.052 in the greenery of the topmost boughs.
  • 06.052 in its boughs,
  • 06.099 The eagles had brought up dry boughs for fuel,
  • 07.134 almost beneath the great overhanging boughs
  • 08.002 in the tangled boughs
  • 08.041 and grimed from the old bark of the greater boughs;
  • 08.113 and crawling along the boughs above the heads of the dwarves.
  • 08.124 and the boughs less thick