Casta

So I've discovered something pretty awesome. I have no idea if anyone's discovered it before (I assume they have, but a Web search doesn't turn anything up). Please don't tell me I'm wrong! But I don't see how I can be.

I was looking for a Quenya word for "reason" in the philosophical sense (i.e. The Dream of Reason). The only thing Parf Edhellen gave me was casta "cause," which means "reason" in one sense (as in "the reason something happened"), but not in the sense I wanted ("the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic").

But then, on another site entirely, I noticed that "casta" also means "fraction" (specifically ¼, but also, if I'm not mistaken, "fraction" in general). I came back here to verify, and sure enough, that seems to be correct.

So why is this significant? Because our English word "rationality" is derived from "ratio"; in other words, fraction! (This is not an accident; to the ancient Greeks, to reason correctly about fractions was the source or beginning of logical thinking.)

So, then, "casta" means (or rather, can mean) just exactly "reason" in the logical/philosophical sense!

Oddly enough, we had another "don't tell me I'm wrong" request not long ago. Unfortunately he was, and sadly so are you.

This will hopefully change soon, but Parf Edhellen currently lacks warning signs for entries from "Quettaparma Quenyallo". This dictionary by Fauskanger includes some neologisms (which are usually marked in this website, but not so with this source), and *casta is one of them. It was taken from Tolkien's earliest drafts of the language (from the 1910-1930 period), which can be vastly different when compared to the Late Period (1950-1970) form of the language. The primitive root of that word was KAH (whose validity for the Late Period is debatable at best), and a derivation from it (according to Late Period formations) would instead be *cahta.

Meanwhile the attested Late Period word casta "one fourth" is rather a variant form of canasta whose elements are canta "four" (from KANAT), and asta "division, part". Thus what you have found is arguably not even a coincidence.

Is there, then, an alternative that would mean something like "reason" in the sense of "reasoning"?

The closest options are handassë "understanding, intelligence", handë "knowledge, understanding", and handelë "intellect".