Quenya
tál
noun. foot, foot; [ᴹQ.] bottom, [ᴱQ.] lowest part
Cognates
- S. tâl “foot; [lower] end”
Derivations
Element in
- Q. attalya “biped, *(lit.) two-footed”
- ᴺQ. cantalya “four-legged, quadruped, (lit.) four-footed”
- Q. táli lantalasselingië “*with feet like the music of falling leaves” ✧ PE16/096
- ᴺQ. tallimë “ankle, (lit.) foot-link”
- Q. taltil “toe, *(lit.) foot-tip”
- Q. taltol “big toe”
- Q. Tyeleptalëa “Silver-footed”
Variations
- tal ✧ PE19/103
- tāl ✧ VT43/16; VT49/17
The Quenya word for “foot” derived from the root √TAL of similar meaning (PE19/103; VT49/17; Ety/TAL). Given its Sindarin cognate S. tâl (not ✱✱taul) its ancient stem form must have had a short vowel, with the long vowel in the uninflected form the result of the subjective noun case which lengthened the base vowel of monosyllables (PE21/76). Q. tál could also refer to the bottom of things (PE21/21, 76) analogous to English “foot of the mountain” and similar phrases.
Conceptual Development: The earliest iteration of this word was ᴱQ. tala “foot” in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s under the early root ᴱ√TALA “support” (QL/88), a form also appearing in the contemporaneous Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa (PME/88). In the Early Qenya Grammar of the 1920s it became ᴱQ. tál with plural tăli indicating an ancient short vowel (PE14/43, 76). In the Declension of Nouns from the early 1930s, ᴹQ. tāl had inflected forms with tal-, again indicating a short vowel in the stem (PE21/21), and likewise with the (1930s-style) genitive form talen in The Etymologies written around 1937 (Ety/TAL). Most of its later appearances also imply a short vowel in the stem, the main exception being the plural form táli in the 1950s version of the Nieninquë “poem”.