Vocabulary from The Professor

[mark12_30]

From 'The Man In The Moon Came Down Too Soon'

"At plenilune in his argent moon
in his heart he longed for Fire:
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites;
for red was his desire,
For crimson and rose and ember-glows,
for flame with burning tongue,
For the scarlet skies in a swift sunrise
when a stormy day is young."

Plenilune???

Definition: The full moon or the time of a full moon.

In a letter to his aunt in 1961, J R R Tolkien wrote of this word that it was beautiful even before it was understood, that he wished he could have the pleasure of meeting it for the first time again, and that “Surely the first meeting should be in a living context, and not in a dictionary.”

Thanks to the Professor, my introduction to this beautiful word WAS in a living context! And I love it!
("Novilune", in case you are curious, means New Moon. But that one came from dictionaryland.....)

What precious words have you joyfully discovered from Tolkien's "Living Contexts"?

[mark12_30]

Nenuphars.

Turns out they are water-lilies; but it took a long time before I even thought to investigate.

Down from a hill ran a green rill;
its water I drank to my heart's ease.
Up its fountain-stair to a country fair
of ever-eve I came, far from the seas,
climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows:
flowers lay there like fallen stars,
and on a blue pool, glassy and cool,
like floating moons the nenuphars.
Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping
by a slow river of rippling weeds;
gladdon-swords guarded the fords,
and green spears, and arrow-reeds.

[Legolas]

The first time I read The Hobbit, I loved these words.

“Seems to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself!” thought Mr. Baggins, who was feeling positively flummoxed, and was beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed.

“Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!” he said aloud. “Why don’t they come and lend a hand?” Lo and behold! there stood Balin and Dwalin at the door of the kitchen, and Fili and Kili behind them, and before he could say knife they had whisked the trays and a couple of small tables into the parlour and set out everything afresh. (Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party)

I hadn't ever heard of a bannock either.

O! What are you seeking,
And where are you making?
The faggots are reeking,
The bannocks are baking!
O! tril-lil-lil-lolly
the valley is jolly,
ha! ha!

(Chapter 3, A Short Rest)

[The Might]

Nenuphars seem to be a strange latinized form, in Romanian we call these flowers nenuferi or simpler nuferi.

[Legolas]

Those above were words I first discovered as a child.

I've learned a bit as an adult too. I came back across this word when composing another post. Wish I could use it more often!

One reader wants fuller details about Gandalf and the Necromancer. But that is too dark – much too much for Richard Hughes' snag. I am afraid that snag appears in everything; though actually the presence (even if only on the borders) of the terrible is, I believe, what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude. A safe fairy-land is untrue to all worlds. (Letter 17)

[Bêthberry]

Good thread idea, Mark!

Originally Posted by Bombadil Goes Boating

'If one day the King returns, in upping he may take you,
brand your yellow bill, and less lordly make you!'

Tom to Old Swan of Elver-isle.

Swan upping is apparently a royal prerogative around Oxford, and so it is of course a cultural and historical marker rather than a philological survival. We don't up our swans here, not even those in Stratford, Ontario, so I didn't know the usage.