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09-18-2011, 03:36 PM | #1 | |
Spectre of Decay
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Neckless and proofless?
While reading The Hobbit this weekend, I was struck by an occurrence of 'neckless' for 'necklace'.
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What makes this interesting is that the copy in which I first found the mistake was a fourth impression of the fourth edition (George Allen and Unwin, 1983) and the only copy that duplicated it was a 1978 Guild Publishing edition that is identical to the GA&U edition even down to the pagination. However, I have an old Unwin Paperbacks copy of The Hobbit from 1983 (a late impression of a 1975 paperback edition) that does not contain the mistake. How, I wonder, did a mistake like that get into such a late edition? I would be very interested to know if this was a mistake in the typesetting for the Allen and Unwin fourth edition, and for how many impressions and in which editions it continued. It seems clear that the mistake was not present in any copies before 1978, but I hope that the rest of you can confirm this from your own libraries.
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 09-21-2011 at 03:40 PM. |
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09-18-2011, 04:40 PM | #2 |
Pilgrim Soul
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I am not technologically aware enough to know but when did they start to move from physically typesetting books and doing it on computers. It does seem like something that slipped passed a spell checker.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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09-18-2011, 05:44 PM | #3 |
Wight
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Neckless
Not sure if it's relevant, but 'neckless' seems to be a valid word according to my on line dictionary and spell checker... That would make it an editing whoopsie, rather than the computer's fault?
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09-18-2011, 07:17 PM | #4 |
Pilgrim Soul
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That is what I meant - because it is a real world it wouldn't have been picked up by a spell checker. I have been doing genealogical research lately and mistranscriptions of the indexes into the databases are a nightmare. But unlike someone turning Diana to Deana and Doris to Davis in a list, you would hope that this error would have been spotted by a proofreader.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace Last edited by Mithalwen; 09-18-2011 at 07:23 PM. |
09-18-2011, 07:27 PM | #5 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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Well, Bilbo did get the necklace from Dain, a dwarf. And since dwarves are, by their very nature, stubby and stout, perhaps this was a Freudian slip on Bilbo's part, using the term "neckless" as an allusion to squat dwarves lacking a neck beneath their billowing beards. For a dwarf, it would not be a "necklace", but more of a...ummm..."chestlace".
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09-19-2011, 07:44 AM | #6 | |
Spectre of Decay
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A tempting hypothesis. I'd have expected Tolkien's edition of the Red Book to have at least a footnote about that, though.
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09-19-2011, 09:21 AM | #7 |
Late Istar
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For the record, none of my American editions contain the mistake. I have the 1977 Ballantine edition, the 1988 Houghton Mifflin annotated edition, and a recent printing of the 1973 Houghton Mifflin slipcase edition.
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09-19-2011, 09:46 PM | #8 |
Dread Horseman
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09-20-2011, 07:17 AM | #9 |
Spectre of Decay
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The obvious comment from the usual suspect
Noah Webster was the man with the creative spellings. I attribute the success of his unilateral spelling reform to the general unavailability of good educational books in early nineteenth-century America. Anyway, I'd rather sound English than Californian so boo and sucks to William B. Ide.
I suspect that in a surprising move you're right about this particular mistake, though. I would like to confirm that it wasn't present in the third edition before I pronounce this a dead end, but apparently this is no more than a slip-up with new technology at GA&U.
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 09-20-2011 at 01:32 PM. Reason: GA&U, Squatter. Get it right, man! |
09-20-2011, 08:07 AM | #10 |
Dread Horseman
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I kid because I love. I've always preferred "grey" to "gray" for instance, which I'm almost certain traces back to Tolkien.
I estimate that one in five people in California does sound English. |
09-20-2011, 01:49 PM | #11 |
Spectre of Decay
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We love you too. We even named a road after you over in Lympstone.
If it weren't for Tolkien I'd never have heard the word thrawn.
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? |
09-20-2011, 06:14 PM | #12 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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And let's not forget "flammifer", "bebothered", "flummoxed", "glede" and "confusticated".
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
09-20-2011, 06:25 PM | #13 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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Quote:
I didn't notice any mistake in my version of TH if it was there, and I don't have the book on me to check. But the first thing I thought upon reading the first post was a choker.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera Last edited by Galadriel55; 09-20-2011 at 08:19 PM. |
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09-20-2011, 07:35 PM | #14 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
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For what it's worth I recently discovered I use the british spelling for a LOT of words, including some I wasn't even aware HAD alternate spelling. For example I collect sea shells in particular those of the genus Cyparaea (or more acccuratly those that were in that genus before it was divided up into many smaller genera). I had always known the spelling of the common name of these shells as "cowrie", and that was how I wrote it. however when I got serios I discovered that, in American English it is considered proper to spell it "cowry". I still use the British spelling (To me it just looks better) but I had to learn to do searches under both spellings. I also tend to write "colour" and "theatre".
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09-20-2011, 08:29 PM | #15 |
Dread Horseman
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And we named a pub-slash-brewery after you, my friend!
You'll have to forgive the missing apostrophe. The sign-maker is one of those artsy types who insisted on sampling the fare before setting to work on the sign so that "the energy of the place would come out in the piece". I consider it a smashing success. If Lorenz Hart had been a Tolkien fan, maybe Ella Fitzgerald would have sung "Bewitched, Bebothered, and Confusticated" instead. One can dream. |
09-20-2011, 08:39 PM | #16 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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Quote:
Anyway, I put "neckless" down to a Freudian slip on some editor's part, looking at a colleague across the room whose head appeared to sit directly on his shoulders.
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09-20-2011, 08:42 PM | #17 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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I heard about your anglophilic spelling proclivities, but all this time I thought it was just rumour.
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
09-21-2011, 03:54 AM | #18 |
Pilgrim Soul
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I was quite startled on the first morning of my first visit to the States, when I queried why the bus didn't seem to be going where I expected to be told "the bus has been re-routed because it's Labo(u)r Day" You would expect one rout to be enough for a bus.. if not completely unnecessary...
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
09-21-2011, 03:05 PM | #19 | ||
Spectre of Decay
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I win the namesake game
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Returning by herculean effort to something like the topic: the reason I ended up starting a thread about what would otherwise be a mere collector's footnote was that it's often hard to tell with Tolkien what's a mistake and what's JRRT arguing with the dictionary. Thrawn, for example, isn't standard English; it's a Scots dialect spelling of 'thrown' in what my dictionary calls an "obsolete sense" (not in 1954 it wasn't, apparently). It appears to be common across the north of England, deriving ultimately from OE thrawan, and I suspect that JRRT liked it because phonologically it's changed less since Old English than the standard English alternative, a bit like the situation that would exist if *dwarrows had survived in a dialect form instead of being reintroduced by JRRT himself: the Oxford Dictionary of English now lists dwarves as a legitimate plural of dwarf. All of the above means that when I find an unusual spelling in Tolkien, I have to check to make sure that it isn't deliberate. This makes a typesetting error far more annoying than it would normally be, although any kind of copyist's error is a gross irritation. I'm reminded of something Michael Drout said on his blog about (inter alia) Herman Melville. Quote:
Something like that?
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09-21-2011, 04:51 PM | #20 |
Gruesome Spectre
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Exactly. I've known a fellow or two like that in my time.
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09-22-2011, 12:39 PM | #21 |
Deadnight Chanter
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Well, my paperback copy (not the original one, that got lost having been borrowed and re-borrowed and never returned to me) in another room with kids sleeping in for me to check now, but Kindle edition does say necklace at least.
As a side note, I had to get closer to the screen to reassure myself this were a recent topic indeed - the names of the posters, they looked like something back from 2003 you know )
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09-22-2011, 02:05 PM | #22 |
Gruesome Spectre
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H I! Good to see you, sir!
I can't find my oldest copy of TH, which is no doubt buried in one of the plastic containers in my basement. I'm curious about this.
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09-29-2011, 02:33 PM | #23 | |
Spectre of Decay
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Quote:
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? |
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09-30-2011, 10:26 AM | #24 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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Sorry to ruin your picture of 2003...
...but I just checked my edition, and it says "necklace".
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
01-23-2012, 06:56 PM | #25 | |||
Blossom of Dwimordene
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We has a neck, but we also has many other typos:
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And from a peek into A Long Expected Party that was put as an appendix, Quote:
I have a feeling there was another gaffe that I can't locate at the moment... Will add it if I find it.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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01-24-2012, 01:25 PM | #26 | |
Shade of Carn Dûm
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Quote:
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