Quenya 

indil

lily

indil noun "lily", or other large single flower. Adopted and adapted from Valarin. (WJ:399)

indil

noun. lily, other large single flower

A Quenya noun for “lily” or more generally any “large flower”, cognate of Ad. inzil.

Conceptual Development: This word appeared in two forms with competing etymologies. In the early 1950s, it appeared as Q. insil, a loan word from Atani inzil, where the [[aq|[nz] became [ns]]] (PE19/99). A similar word indil appeared in the 1959-60 essay Quendi and Eldar, where it was a derivative of Valarin iniðil (WJ/399), with the middle i lost due to the Quenya syncope and then the [[q|spirant [ð] becoming the stop [d] after the nasal [n]]].

In the second scenario, Tolkien did not directly connect Q. indil to Ad. inzil, but the coincidence of forms is too great: Tolkien must have imagined a reverse loan from Valarin > Quenya > Atani. Perhaps this loan took place before the [ð] became [d] in Quenya ([[q|[nð] > [nd]]]), and the voiced spirant was adapted as the sibilant [z] in Atani because that language did not possess spirants in its earliest historical stages.

I personally prefer this second scenario and the form indil, because using the first scenario would require discarding one of our few Valarin words (iniðil).

Cognates

  • Ad. inzil “flower, lily” ✧ PE19/099

Derivations

  • Ed. inzil “flower, lily” ✧ PE19/099
  • Val. iniðil “a lily, other large single flower” ✧ WJ/399

Phonetic Developments

DevelopmentStagesSources
Ed. inzil > insil[inzil] > [insil]✧ PE19/099
Val. iniðil > indil[iniðil] > [inðil] > [indil]✧ WJ/399

Variations

  • insil ✧ PE19/099
Quenya [PE19/099; WJ/399] Group: Eldamo. Published by