Interesting book
I just finished a *very* interesting book about JRRT. It's called "The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary" by Paul Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall and Edmund Weiner.
Review behind cut:
As most of us know, JRRT was one of the people who worked on the OED, beginning right after WWI. The first part of the book is rather technical, dealing with his work there, and explaining how it was all put together. (His first work was on the letter "W".) Nowadays, when one can search for references at the click of a mouse, it's hard to remember the days when trying to find the first time a word was quoted meant physically skimming through book after dusty book, by hand. Their methods, of writing things out in longhand on little slips of paper seems so haphazard, yet it was the only way to do it. It seems to have been work that he really enjoyed. Still, unless you are really *into* that yourself, you may want to skip to the second part of the book.
The *second* half of the book deals with words that are in the OED, directly attributable to JRRT--they may be words he coined, such as "mithril", "eucatastrophe"or "malefit" (that last one means the opposite of "benefit"), words he resurrected from obscurity, such as "ent" or "mathom", and words others coined about him, such as "Tolkienesque" or "Tolkienish". It is truly fascinating to see how his mind worked: most words seemed to have several layers to them--the literal meaning in the way he actually used them, and the various other words and meanings that contributed to them. Some of his words were really puns that no one except another linguist would understand.
By the way, he used the word "dumbledore" long before JKR did--in a version of the poem "Errantry". It *means* "bumblebee", LOL!
At any rate, it was a very enjoyable read, and cast light on another facet of this brilliant man.
Review behind cut:
As most of us know, JRRT was one of the people who worked on the OED, beginning right after WWI. The first part of the book is rather technical, dealing with his work there, and explaining how it was all put together. (His first work was on the letter "W".) Nowadays, when one can search for references at the click of a mouse, it's hard to remember the days when trying to find the first time a word was quoted meant physically skimming through book after dusty book, by hand. Their methods, of writing things out in longhand on little slips of paper seems so haphazard, yet it was the only way to do it. It seems to have been work that he really enjoyed. Still, unless you are really *into* that yourself, you may want to skip to the second part of the book.
The *second* half of the book deals with words that are in the OED, directly attributable to JRRT--they may be words he coined, such as "mithril", "eucatastrophe"or "malefit" (that last one means the opposite of "benefit"), words he resurrected from obscurity, such as "ent" or "mathom", and words others coined about him, such as "Tolkienesque" or "Tolkienish". It is truly fascinating to see how his mind worked: most words seemed to have several layers to them--the literal meaning in the way he actually used them, and the various other words and meanings that contributed to them. Some of his words were really puns that no one except another linguist would understand.
By the way, he used the word "dumbledore" long before JKR did--in a version of the poem "Errantry". It *means* "bumblebee", LOL!
At any rate, it was a very enjoyable read, and cast light on another facet of this brilliant man.