2b812fd9
XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
In message
Christopher Kreuzer spoke these
staves:
>
> On Sep 2, 6:54 pm, sean_q wrote:
>>
>> On 9/1/2011 4:35 PM, Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
>>>
>>> Here are a couple of less common words. Do they qualify as
>>> archaisms? Moot
>>
>> A "moot point"?
>
> I meant moot as in meeting (place).
Quite common among scouts, as the 18 to I-don't-remember-exactly-
what-but-somewhere-about-twenty-five scouts are regularly invited to
a "World Scout Moot" (next time in Canada in 2013). You also find
the word "jamboree" in scouting :-)
>>> Hauberk
>>
>> Dimly recognized as some kind of weapon or clothing from the
>> Middle Ages.
>
> Me too. A lot of these words are, as you point out, just words
> that were common in a pre-industrial and medieval society.
And of course revitalized in medieval role playing games :-)
In the role playing circles the standard set by the original Dungeons
and Dragons games (and the various variants and evolutions) has
contributed to revitalizing a lot of archaic words and terms (even if
Gygax et Al. were never so accomplished in the philology as Tolkien,
who often uses a word in the form that it would have had, had it
stayed in common use in English until modern times -- the next gives
an example of this).
>>> Thane
>>
>> Anyone who's ever taken "The Scottish Play" (considered bad luck
>> to be named) in school would have a vague idea what a Thane is.
[...]
>
> Good point.
Just as anyone familiar with the Old Norse legends will know the O.N.
version, /þegn/ (I recognized the Hobbit version, /thain/, more
easily from that source, and from there it was not much of a leap to
/thane/). The Hobbit version is of course the form the word would
have had if it had stayed in common use (just as the modern Danish
version would be /tegn/) -- we see Tolkien do this often enough as
e.g. also in /searu-man/ -> Saruman.
>>> Dromund
>>
>> This is the only one that totally mystified me. However, my
>> knowledge of the Byzantine Navy is extremely sparse.
>
> More used in the medieval sense of "any large ship" I think.
Ah, I remember wanting my ages-old Dungeons & Dragons character to
grow rich enough to buy a "dromond" ;-)
>>> Corsair
>>
>> Anyone familiar with WW2 aviation would recognize the Vought
>> F4U Corsair, a carrier-capable fighter aircraft also used in
>> Korea.
>
> In all seriousness, when looking it up I hadn't realised this word
> was so, well, French.
Though certainly not in common use, I have encountered the Danish
version, /korsar/, frequently enough not in various connections (from
cartoons -- if I recall correctly earlier /Phantoms/ often had to
fight corsairs -- over poetry to history books) to have been familiar
with the word.
>>> Fell (deeds)
>>
>> Archaic but recognizable.
I always thought that this was connected to Danish /fæl/, 'that
scares or suprises', from ON /fælinn/, but Etymonline.com has it
derived from Old French with the meaning 'cruel, fierce, vicious',
which I guess makes more sense in context ;)
Though obviously on a false premise, I was nonetheless more confused
by the use of /fell/ for the hide or skin of an animal.
--
Troels Forchhammer
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Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
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