Tolkien and the 'other' N-word ;)

[Formendacil]

I can't say that I really learned a lot of new words from Tolkien- although I'm sure I picked up quite a few from context.

What I can say, though, is that Tolkien made a number of words a lot more prevalent in my everyday speech- and writing. I'm not even really sure which ones they are.

Certainly, a greater preponderance of more archaic words, and a fondness for older, British, spellings factored in a great deal.

*Query to the Mods: Should this perchance be in N&N?

[Angry Hill Troll]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

*Query to the Mods: Should this perchance be in N&N?

I wasn't completely sure where to post this myself, or what to title it... (I figured the title I chose would hopefully pique people's interest enough to look at the thread )

I chose The Books because I think that Tolkien's writing style, and particularly his rich vocabulary including many older words, is one of the things which makes reading him so enjoyable. To me, the writing style itself, because it is somewhat different than that commonly used today, gets me into the feeling of being in a different place and time, and the archaic words give his world a medieval feel.

Perhaps that's the larger point, aside from the anecdote in the original post and the idea of Enriching Your Word Power with Tolkien, of the importance of Tolkien's writing style and in particular his vocabulary, on the readability and success of his books.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I dug up an aged thread on this topic which you might enjoy reading: Tolkien vocabulary. It too is located in the Books forum, so we'll leave this one here for now as well.

[Aiwendil]

I'm sure I learned a good many new words from TH and LotR, as I read them (well, had them read to me) when I was rather young - about 5 or 6, I think. But that's long enough ago that I can't remember it particularly well.

I did learn a few words from HoMe. For instance:

ghyll = a deep, rocky ravine
shoon = old plural of "shoe"
clomb = old past tense of "climb"
champain = level, open country

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Most notable to me are the words Tolkien invented himself: eucatastrophe and dyscatastrophe.

[Kath]

eucatastrophe

Did he really invent that because I thought it was invented long before Tolkien was around, by a psychologist, though my teacher could be telling me lies.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

As far as I know, it was Tolkien's own word. I'm not a linguist though, so I checked it with several online sources. The Merriam-Webster dictionary tells me it's not in the dictionary, ergo not a known word. The Google references I got were all to Tolkien's usage. Wikipedia has this:

Eucatastrophe is a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien which refers to the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which result in the protagonist's well-being.

As far as I can see, though there is certainly a linguistic background for the word, it was his own invention and has not been used by others except in reference to him. If someone knows more about it, though, I hope they'll tell us!