The name of the plain of Ard-galen after it was devastated by the fires of Morgoth, translated “Gasping Dust” (S/150). The name includes of faug “thirsty” and lith “dust” (SA/faug, lith). Its initial element may be an intensive prefix, the equivalent of Q. an-, with “gasping” an intensive form of “thirsty”.
Conceptual Development: In the earliest Silmarillion drafts, the site of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears was named ᴱN. Niniach (SM/4), but later in the 1930s Tolkien revised the name to N. Fauglith (LR/289). In The Etymologies, this name was translated as “Thirsty Sand” but otherwise had essentially the same derivation as given above, missing only the intensive prefix (Ety/LIT, PHAU).
An adjective for “thirsty” appearing in names like Anfauglir “Jaws of Thirst”.
Conceptual Development: In the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s the word for “thirsty” was G. luib (GL/55) clearly based on the early root ᴱ√LOYO (QL/56). By Early Noldorin Word-lists of the 1920s, the word had become ᴱN. faug “thirsty” (PE13/143), and N. faug “thirsty” appeared in The Etymologies of the 1930s under the root ᴹ√PHAU̯ “gape” (Ety/PHAU). Christopher Tolkien gave faug the gloss “gape” in The Silmarillion appendix (SI/faug), but that seems to refer to the root meaning from the 1930s.