Early Quenya
pumpole
noun. bubble; merboy
Beware, older languages below! The languages below were invented during Tolkien's earlier period and should be used with caution. Remember to never, ever mix words from different languages!
Beware, older languages below! The languages below were invented during Tolkien's earlier period and should be used with caution. Remember to never, ever mix words from different languages!
pumpole
noun. bubble; merboy
A noun in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s glossed “bubble”, an elaboration of pumpo “bubble; bladder; blister” (QL/75). In the contemporaneous Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa the word pumpole was glossed “bubble (a merboy)” (PME/75). It isn’t clear whether “a merboy” indicates that it was also the name of a character Tolkien intended to introduce (such as ᴱQ. Nardi “a flower fairy”, a name appearing in QL but nowhere else), or whether pumpole was term for a kind of sea-fairy, a masculine equivalent of ᴱQ. oaris “mermaid” or ᴱQ. wingild- “[sea] nymph”. I think the second scenario is more likely.