atalantëa

ruinous, downfallen

atalantëa adj. "ruinous, downfallen"; see atalantë

atalantëa

adjective. ruinous, downfallen

atalantë

downfall, overthrow, especially as name [atalantë] of the [downfallen] land of númenor

atalantë noun "downfall, overthrow, especially as name [Atalantë] of the [downfallen] land of Númenor" (DAT/DANT, TALÁT, Akallabêth, SD:247, 310; also LR:47, VT45:26). Variant atalantië "Downfall", said to be a normal noun-formation in Quenya (Letters:347, footnote). From the common noun atalantë "collapse, downfall" is derived the adj. atalantëa "ruinous, downfallen", pl. atalantië in Markirya (changed to sg. atalantëa this change does not make immediate sense, since the adjective undoubtedly modifies a plural noun, but Tolkien does not always let adjectives agree in number).

atalantëa mindonnar

upon fallen towers

The thirty-first line of the Markirya poem (MC/222). The first word is the adjective atalantëa “downfallen” followed by the allative (“upon”) plural form of the noun mindon “tower”.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> atalantëa mindon-na-r = “✱downfallen tower-upon-(plural)”

Conceptual Development: In the first draft, Tolkien used atalantëa, but in the second draft he switched to the plural form of the adjective atalantië to agree with the plural noun. He then deleted this to revert to the uninflected form of the adjective atalantëa (MC/222). This is likely because adjectives are not inflected when modifying nouns with plural noun cases; see the section on Adjectives and Noun Case Endings in the entry on adjectives. In the first and second drafts Tolkien first used the longer allative plural form of the noun mindoninnar but revised this to a more abbreviated form mindonnar in the second draft (MC/222).