A word for “numberless, countless” appearing in its plural form únótime from the Namárië poem in the phrase: yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron “long years numberless as the wings of trees” (LotR/377; RGEO/58). Tolkien described the etymology of this word in various places as a negation of nótima “countable” using the negative prefix ú-, so more literally meaning “✱uncountable”.
Conceptual Development: In the brief period around 1969 where Tolkien made lá the primary negative in Quenya, he redefined únótima as “hard/difficult to count” (PE22/156, 160); it also had this gloss in notes from 1967 (PE17/62). In a (rejected) page within Definitive Linguistic Notes (DLN) from 1959, Tolkien instead had urunóte or urnótima based on the prefix ur(u)- (PE17/172), elsewhere glossed “hard, difficult” (PE17/154). In The Etymologies of the 1930s, Tolkien gave ᴹQ. avanóte “without number, numberless” under the root ᴹ√AWA “away, forth; out” (Ety/AWA).
únótima adj. "not possible to count, countless" (VT39:14), pl. únótimë (translated "numberless") attested (ú-nót-imë "not-count-able") (Nam, RGEO:66, Appendix E). Cf. unnegated nótima, q.v.