898ff48a
XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: giles@poetic.com
On 8/25/2011 4:19 AM, Noel Q. von Schneiffel wrote:
> On Aug 24, 9:47 pm, "Clams Canino" wrote:
>> "Jonathan de Boyne Pollard"
wrote in messagenews:IU.D20110824.T132720.P8276.Q0@J.de.Boyne.Po
lard.localhost...
>>
>>> T. A. Shippey's _The Road to Middle-Earth_ notes both the 1961 complaint
>>> to Puffin and the earlier 1954 rejection of the first printing proofs of
>>> _The Lords of the Rings_ because of changes of "dwarvish" to "dwarfish"
>>> and "elven" to "elfin" as well as "dwarves" to "dwarfs". It also
>>> discusses the differences between words such as "tiffs" and "proofs" and
>>> words such as "loaves" and "hooves" in relation to Old English.
>>
>> Yes... it's positively Dwarves - in pleural Dwarrow. No doubt at all.
>
> If the correct form is indeed sing. dwarf - pl. dwarrows, then we must
> reversely point out that the singular of "barrow-wights" is "barf-
> wight".
No. While there are similar phonological processes at work that make OE
beorg into modE barrow, it isn't cricket to take modE barrow and by
analogy decide that its singular form is barf. Simply doesn't work.
For one thing, the plural of barrow is barrows; barrow is the singular
form. The plural of barrow-wights is barrow-wightS not barrowS-wights,
so there's no basis for the back-formation barrow>barf. The singular of
barrow-wight, a compound noun made up of two nouns, is barrow-wight.
This does explain why the barf-wight who trapped Frodo and the
> others looked so haggard and desiccated. A bad case of bulimia.
>
> On a related note, the true singular of "arrows" is "arf", which is
> simply an onomatopoeic approximation of the sound people make when hit
> with one.
>
Same here.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
