I recently completed my third reading of the the Lord of the Rings (which confirmed the trilogy as my favorite book); but I must say it was a linguistically humbling experience, for I encountered not a few words that I did not recognize. I started writing down words I didn’t recognize when I was reading the Hobbit, and I continued all the way through the Return of the King. I don’t know if anyone else would be interested in this, but I thought I would write down some of the new words I learned and see if anyone knows them. I guess I’m not as fluent in English as I thought I was!
glede
mattock
alder
garth
byre
terebinth
turpentine
runagate
rowan
consign
quoit
dram
bedight
doughty
provender
causeway
fallow
dingle
dike
coombe
combe
culvert
tilth
oast
rill
wain
vambrace
dromund
recreant
dour
ghyll
slag
sluice
livery
swag (n.)
slaver
kerb
serried
turves
niggard
baldric
weskit
gammer
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Very cool words! I love words…I have yet to read Lord of the Rings with my own eyes. We read it aloud as a family. I’m hoping to read it this summer, though!
hmm. Very interesting! I don’t know most of these. I’ve heard of turpentine. Does it come from a tree? I know its used to cleaned oil based paints….if its the same turpentine.
How many more were there that you didn’t know besides the ones you listed here?
Probably several more, though I think these were most of them. I tried to write them all down as I read, but sometimes there were so many that I was getting up to write them down every few minutes, and it was breaking the flow of the story. So there were probably some that I intended to write down later and then forgot.
There were only 43 words (or a few more) out of the 468,420 total words in the book that you didn’t know. I’d say that’s pretty good.
Haha I guess that is pretty good, in perspective.
I know a few of them, but not most. Very interesting, and I think Gary’s summation is a good perspective.
I know about half of them, but then I don’t know ANY Chinese!