Re: Dwarves and all.

At 12:37 am -0500 30/11/99, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, abrigon wrote:
>
>>I wonder if the usage of "Dwarven"is actually closer to the plural for
>>Dwarf?
>
>I thought we had this discussion a few months ago or so.  Didn't Ray
>or John C. come up with dwarrow or some such?  Details a bit hazy... I
>don't remember if that was a singular or a plural.
It was Tolkien, in fact, who pointed out that had the plural of 'dwarf'
developed independently it would've been 'dwarrows'.  He claimed his
coinage "dwarves" was a compromise between the then regular plural 'dwarfs'
and 'dwarrows'.   He did use 'dwarrow-' in the  placename 'Dwarrowdelve'
(Dwarf-digging).

Tolkien's 'dwarvish' was also a coinage, the pre-Tolkien adjective being
'dwarfish'.  Did he also use 'dwarven' on the analogy of 'elven'?  I don't
recall it.  But that certainly would be an innovation.

The -v- is not etymologically correct and could only have arisen either
through analogy with words like elf~elves, wolf~wolves etc., or through
deliberate coinage.

The Old English word was 'dweorg'; there are cognate words other Germanic
langs, e.g. Dutch 'dwerg'; Old Norse 'dverg'; German 'Zwerg'.

One might have expected a form like *dwarrough /dwOr@/.  But some dialects
changed {gh} /x/ to /f/ (as in 'laugh', 'cough') and 'dwarf' came into the
standard language from such a dialect.

Just be thankful we do actually spell it 'dwarf' and not 'dwargh'  :)

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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