Quenya 

hendumaica

sharp-eye

hendumaica ("k")noun? adj.? "sharp-eye" (read *"sharp-eyed"?) (WJ:337)

hendumaica

adjective. sharp-eye[d]

A word for “sharp-eye” (likely an adjective = “sharp-eyed”) appearing in a discussion of the name Maeglin, a combination of dual hendu “pair of eyes” and maica “sharp” (WJ/337).

Cognates

Elements

WordGloss
hen“eye”
maica“sharp, piercing”

Variations

  • hendumaika ✧ WJ/337

maica

sharp, piercing

maica (1) ("k")adj. "sharp, piercing" (SA:maeg), cf. hendumaica and the noun maica below.

aica

sharp

aica (1) ("k") adj. "sharp" _(AYAK) or "fell, terrible, dire" (PM:347; according to PM:363 seldom applied to evil things)_. In Aicanáro, q.v.

hen

eye

hen (hend-, as in pl. hendi) noun "eye" (KHEN-D-E); possibly dual #hendu in hendumaica, q.v. Noun henfanwa "eye-screen, veil upon eyes" (PE17:176), adj. henulca "evileyed" (SD:68; cf. ulca).

hen

noun. eye

The Quenya word for “eye”, derived from the root √KHEN for eye-words (PE17/187; Ety/KHEN-D-E) and with stem-form hend- given its dual hendu (WJ/337).

Conceptual Development: This word first appeared as ᴱQ. hen in The Qenya Phonology of the 1910s, derived from primitive ᴱ✶þχe-ndǝ and appearing beside ᴱQ. “eye, pupil” < ᴱ✶þeχē (PE12/21). Hen (hend-) “eye” appeared in the Qenya Lexicon though it was marked “†” for archaic (QL/40), and ᴱQ. hend- also appeared in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon as the cognate of G. hen “eye” (GL/48). ᴱQ. hen appeared regularly in documents from the 1920s (PE13/147; PE14/43, 76; PE16/136), although in the Early Noldorin Grammar of the 1920s ᴱQ. sinda was given as the cognate of ᴱN. hen(n) “eye” (PE13/122). The form ᴱQ. sinda seems to have been a transient idea.

A lengthy declension of ᴹQ. hen “eye” appeared in documents from the early 1930s (PE21/52) and in The Etymologies of the 1930s it was based on a new the root ᴹ√KHEN-D-E “eye” (Ety/KHEN-D-E). In both these documents, inflected forms indicate a stem form of hend-. Thus this word and its stem were quite stable in Tolkien’s mind, though he did alter its root from early ᴱ√SEHE [ÞEHE] to later √KHEN.

Cognates

Derivations

  • KHEN “base of eye-words, base of eye-words; [ᴹ√] look at, see, observe, direct gaze”

Element in

ecya

sharp

#ecya adj. "sharp" in Ecyanáro ("k") "Sharp Flame", masc. name, Sindarin Aegnor(VT41:14, 19). The Quenya form of Aegnor is elsewhere given as Aicanáro instead.

nerca

sharp, angular

nerca adj. "sharp, angular" (PE17:55), variant nexa (reading uncertain).

nexa

sharp, angular

nexa adj. "sharp, angular" (PE17:55; the editor indicates that the reading is uncertain, so the variant nerca may be preferred.)