kwat

root. fill; full

This root was used for Elvish “fill, full” words for most of Tolkien’s life. The earliest appearance of this root was in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s, where it appeared unglossed as ᴱ√QṆTṆ or ᴱ√QATA with derivatives ᴱQ. qanta “full, whole, all” and ᴱQ. qanta- “fill, complete” (QL/78). It seems in this early period, Tolkien favored the root with syllabic Ṇ, given forms ᴱQ. kunta “full” (< ᴱ✶qṇtā́) beside qanta in the Qenya Phonology (PE12/11) and G. cwintha- “to fill” beside G. cwant “full” in the Gnomish Lexicon (GL/28); these vowel variations are indications of syllabic consonants.

In The Etymologies of the 1930s it appeared as ᴹ√KWAT, mostly with nasal-infixed derivatives like ᴹQ. qanta/N. pant “full”, but with others that were not like N. pathra- “fill” and N. pathred “fullness” (Ety/KWAT). The root appeared in Tolkiens later writings (PE17/68), and in the Quendi and Eldar essay Tolkien said it was an extension of the root √KWA (WJ/412), a notion he repeated in notes on numbers from the late 1960s (VT42/24).

Derivations

• √KWA “complete, full, whole, all, every, complete, full, whole, all, every; [ᴹ√] something” ✧ WJ/392

Derivatives

• Q. quanta “full, filled, full, filled; [ᴱQ.] whole, all” ✧ PE17/068
• Q. quanta- “to fill, to fill [something], (lit.) make full; [ᴱQ.] to complete, fulfill” ✧ PE17/068
• Q. quat- “to fill, to fill, *be filled” ✧ WJ/392
• S. pant “full, full; [G.] (with article) the whole, all the”

Variations

• QUAT ✧ PE17/068; PE17/181
• KWATA ✧ WJ/392
• kwa-ta ✧ WJ/412