kol

root. bear, carry, wear

The root √KOL served various purposes throughout Tolkien’s life. The root appeared as two separate entries in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s: ᴱ√KOLO “to strain through” and also as ᴱ√KOLO, unglossed but with derivatives like ᴱQ. koli- “to prick”, ᴱQ. kolme “point, tip”, and ᴱQ. kolman “peak, summit”, so perhaps meaning something like “✱point” (QL/47). It reappeared in a rejected entry in The Etymologies of the 1930s as ᴹ√KOL with a single derivative ᴹQ. kolma “ring”, and the root had the gloss “round, (?rim)” in an earlier version of the entry (EtyAC/KOL). It had a deleted reference in the entry ᴹ√KOR “round” of which it was probably a variant (EtyAC/KOR).

The root √KOL appeared regularly in Tolkien’s writing in the 1950s and 60s with glosses like “bear, carry” and derivatives of similar meaning (PE17/145, 158; PE22/152, 155; VT39/10). This new meaning of the root was anchored in the words Q. colindo “bearer” as in Q. Cormacolindor “Ring-bearers” (LotR/953), as well as S. coll “cloak” in S. Thingol “Grey-cloak” (PE17/72). In notes from 1969, Tolkien clarified that the root referred “to the ability to support weight or a burden, physical or mental, not necessarily to transporting it” (PE22/155).

morokō

noun. bear

nakh

root. narrow, thin

A root appearing in etymological notes from around 1964 (DD) glossed “narrow, thin” along with a set of Quenya derivatives of similar meaning (PE17/166).

nek

root. narrow, narrow; *angular, sharp

A root appearing in notes on words and phrases from The Lord of the Rings from the late 1950s or early 1960s, serving mainly as the basis for S. naith “angle” (PE17/55). It was also mentioned in a discussion of the death of Isildur at the Gladden Fields, again as the basis for S. naith among other words, where the root √NEK was glossed “narrow” (UT/281-2, note #16). In The Etymologies of the 1930s, N. naith was derived from ᴹ√SNAS or ᴹ√SNAT, but the precise derivation was unclear, and in any cases seems to have been replaced by Tolkien with a more straightforward derivation from √NEK.

The root √NEK also appeared in Quenya Notes (QN) from 1957 with the gloss “deprive”, serving among other things as the basis for S. neithan “one deprived” (PE17/167), which was the name adopted by Túrin after he became an outlaw (S/200). The root appeared again in notes on Elvish numbers from the late 1960s glossed as either “divide, part, separate” (VT47/16) or “divide, separate” (VT48/9), where it served as the basis for √ENEK “six” as the dividing point between the lower and upper set of numbers in the Elvish duodecimal system.

It is not clear whether Tolkien intended all these various meanings for the root √NEK to be connected. For purposes of analysis, I’ve split √NEK “narrow” from √NEK “separate; deprive”, but conceivably the sense “narrow” could be a semantic extension of “separate” or vice-versa.

srawā

noun. body

tilte

noun. peak