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Fascinating information for those who love word origins

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This book is in two parts. The first describes Tolkien's work on the Oxford English Dictionary and how he was able to make good use of his special philological skills. Brief explanations of words that he worked on, as well as technical details of how word origins are traced are given in this section. The second section, about 2/3 of the whole, is made up of entries for various real and "coined" words that Tolkien used in his works. A brief explanation of what the word means, and a quote from his works are given. That is followed by a discussion of the elements from which Tolkien formed the word, and possible variants of that word. "Real" words, mostly taken from Old or Middle English or Old Norse/Icelandic are given historical treatment. "Coined" words, that Tolkien made up out of the roots of "real" words are analyzed to show the components, and how the meaning of each component was used to make a whole word with a meaning that was greater than the sum of its parts. Note that the first part is written in normal chapter format, whereas the second part is more like an encyclopedia or dictionary, with the words as headers, followed by a paragraph or two of explanation.

Tolkien	Customer Rating:
Great info behind the man and his imagination. Highly recommend this book for your own Tolkien Library.

Why, Tolkien Himself Might Have Liked It!	Customer Rating:
Read this and then shelve it next to your of Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-earth. Tolkien's imagination was uniquely, of all the great fantasy writers, preoccupied with words and language, and Shippey's book and this one help us realize that.

Tolkien as Lexicographer and Wordsmith

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This is a short but fasinating volume on Tolkien's time working on the Oxford English Dictionary project (then called the N.E.D. -- the New English Dictionary). The book opens with a few short chapters on Tolkien's time at the O.E.D., a discussion of some of the well-known editors he worked with (e.g., Henry Bradley, C.T. Onions, William Craigie, et al.), and some of the entries (in the W fascicle) that Tolkien is known to have worked on. This section of the book is rather like an extended version of Peter Gilliverh's 1992 article, "At the Wordface: J.R.R. Tolkien's Work on the Oxford English Dictionary" (published in the Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference, but now OOP). The second, and much larger, part of the book is a systematic (if by necessity incomplete) look at many of the words Tolkien's invented or resurrected from obscurity. I won't take the time to enumerate them all here. But suffice it to say that it was fascinating reading, even for an already knowledgable person like myself. A terrific addition to the library of any admirer or student of Tolkien's life and works.

Tolkien, the _OED_, and the Love of Words

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Only those in a persistent neurovegetative state could be unaware of _The Lord of the Rings_, J. R. R. Tolkien's massive epic and the estimable films it inspired. Tolkien has won acclaim as the most beloved author of the twentieth century, and his mythic inventions of lands and creatures are read all over the world, and not just by young people devoted to fantasy. Tolkien is less well known as a sub-editor to a work at least as influential, the _Oxford English Dictionary_. In fact, he was carried off the fields of World War One with trench fever, and wound up in Oxford in 1916, when he was 24 years old. He joined the dictionary's staff for two years, and said, "I learned more in those two years than in any equal period of my life." What he learned was dictionary-making and the lexicographer's way looking at the history of certain words, but his word endeavors also fired his imagination. In _The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary_ (Oxford University Press), Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner have examined Tolkien's contributions to the _OED_, and they are in a perfect position to do so: they are among the current editors of the dictionary themselves. They wanted to write the book "to examine Tolkien's word-hoard with a lexicographer's eye." Anyone interested in either the history of the imaginary Middle Earth or the great dictionary will find richness here. Years later Tolkien wrote of the job offered to him as "kindness... to a jobless soldier in 1918". Most of the dictionary, issued alphabetically, had been done, and Tolkien was assigned as subeditor for a portion of words beginning with W, sorting each word into its subsenses, drafting definitions for each, and researching the etymology. He started off doing this sort of duty for "waggle", "wain", and "waist". His contributions have not ended even now, since the dictionary is still being revised and expanded; notes he made eighty years ago which were deemed too obscure (even for the _OED_!) are being considered for inclusion. Tolkien had been fascinated with old languages, a deep and mystic feeling that inspired his own writing. The authors give examples of other writers who put old words into the mouths of characters with a laughable resulting combination of modern and old forms, but Tolkien got it right, not just in using old words, but in using archaic diction to good effect. As Tolkien himself wrote in an essay "On Translating Beowulf": "We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity and just to the solemn temper of the original, if we avoid _hitting_ and _whacking_ and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'." About half of _The Ring of Words_ is devoted to specific words which Tolkien borrowed, changed, or invented. Here are examined "wraith", "confusticate", "eleventy-one", and "orc". "Hobbit" is here, of course, a word that everyone associates with Tolkien but one which he modestly said he was not sure he had invented, although he could not otherwise account for it. Indeed, in 1977, an obscure list of fantastical creatures published by a folklorist in 1895 included "hobbit" (as well as beings called "boggleboes".) Some of Tolkien's words will never wander outside of literary fantasy, but even these, the authors show, are being widely used in new fantasy novels and by role-playing gamers. Some will justly be getting wider circulation. One I liked is "staggerment": "To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment." And here is a word I think we all could use, "mathom". It was borrowed from a common Old English word meaning "treasure", and Tolkien wrote, "Anything that hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a _mathom_." Such bright inventions will make reading _The Ring of Words_, which is really a serious and scholarly book, a delight for anyone who likes thinking about language.