lanca

noun. sharp edge (not of tools), sudden end

A word for “sharp edge (not of tools), sudden end” in notes from the late 1960s derived from the root √(G)LAN “rim, edge, border, boundary” (VT42/8). Tolkien specified it could be used as:

> ... a cliff-edge, or the clean edge of things made by hand or built, also used in transferred senses, as in kuivie-lankasse, literally “on the brink of life”, of a perilous situation in which one is likely to fall into death.