A word for a “dream” or “vision” with variant forms olor and olos, derived from the root √OLO-S “vision, phantasy” (UT/396).
Conceptual Development: This word dates all the way back to the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s, where ᴱQ. olor or olōre “dream” appeared under the early root ᴱ√LORO or ᴱ√OLOR, both elaborations of ᴱ√OLO (QL/56, 69). Both noun forms were also mentioned in the contemporaneous Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa (PME/69). The Declension of Nouns from the early 1930s had ᴹQ. olar “dream” (PE21/33), but in The Etymologies written around 1937 this again became ᴹQ. olor “dream” from the root {ᴹ√OLOR >>} ᴹ√OLOS “dream” (Ety/LOS, ÓLOS; EtyAC/ÓLOS).
In one set of late notes in connection to Gandalf’s name Olórin, Tolkien modified its meaning:
> Olor is a word often translated “dream”, but that does not refer to (most) human “dreams”, certainly not the dreams of sleep. To the Eldar it included the vivid contents of their memory, as of their imagination: it referred in fact to clear vision, in the mind, of things not physically present at the body’s situation. But not only to an idea, but to a full clothing of this in particular form and detail (UT/396).
Neo-Quenya: For purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would mainly use the form olor (archaic †olos) with the basic meaning “dream” that this word had for much of Tolkien’s life. I would assume that its derivation from ✱olos was influenced by its plural form olori < olozi and also by the related root √(O)LOR. Given Tolkien’s late note above, however, I think this word can also apply to waking visions, as well as particularly vivid memories or imagined forms.
olor noun "dream" (LOS, ÓLOS, LT1:259 [the latter source also gives olórë]); perhaps changed by Tolkien to olos, q.v.