A word for “wing” in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s under the early root ᴱ√VASA (QL/100). A similar word ’wasse appeared under the early root ᴱ√GWASA (QL/103). The word vasse “wing” also appeared in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon (GL/22) and again in Early Qenya Word-lists of the 1920s (PE16/137), but not thereafter.
Early Quenya
talainen tinwelindon
with wings like stars
ala
noun. wing
vasse
noun. wing
wasse
noun. wing
The fourth phrase of the first version of the Oilima Markirya poem (MC/220). The first word is the instrumental form talainen of the noun tala “sail”, followed by the adverbial plural form tinwelindon of the noun tinwe “star”.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> tala-inen tinwe-li-ndon = “✱sail-with star-(plural)-like”
Conceptual Development: This phrase did not appear until the fourth draft of the poem (OM1d: PE16/62); earlier drafts used the unrelated phrase kirilde tinwelinqe (OM1a-c: PE16/56-7, 60). In the revised phrase, Tolkien first used alainen, the instrumental of otherwise-unattested ala “wing”. He changed it to tala in the sixth draft, and the associated Glossary Commentary made its meaning “sail” clear (OM1f: PE16/74-5). Tolkien did not alter the translation of the entire phrase, in which the word “wing” was presumably poetic license.