mal

but

mal conj. "but" (VT43:23)

mal

conjunction. but

malo

pollen, yellow powder

malo (1) (stem *malu-, given the primitive form ¤smalu) noun "pollen, yellow powder" (SMAL)

mal-

verb. to crush, squeeze; to hurt, pain (cause pain to)

malina

yellow

malina adj. "yellow" (SMAL, Letters:308), "yellow, of golden colour" (PE17:51). Malinalda *"Yellow-tree", a name of Laurelin (SA:mal-; evidently malina + alda), translated "Tree of Gold" in the Silmarillion index. Cf. also malinornë.

Tar-culu

gold

Tar-culu ("k"), name listed in the Etymologies but not elsewhere attested. The second element is apparently culu "gold" (a word Tolkien seems to have abandoned); Hostetter and Wynne suggest that this may be an alternative name of Tar-Calion (= Ar-Pharazôn "the Golden"); see VT45:24.

anat

but

anat conj. "but" (VT43:23; possibly an ephemeral form)

apa

but

apa (3) conj. "but": melinyes apa la hé "I love him but not him" (another) (VT49:15)

apa

conjunction. but

culo

gold

[culo, culu ("k")noun "gold" (substance)] (KUL, VT49:47; the word culu_ also occurred in early "Qenya" [LT1:258], but in the Etymologies it was struck out; the regular Quenya word for "gold" is apparently _malta. In another version, culo meant "flame" [VT45:24], but this is apparently also a word Tolkien abandoned.)

laurë

gold

†laurë noun "gold", but of golden light and colour, not of the metal: "golden light" (according to PE17:61 a poetic word). Nai laurë lantuva parmastanna lúmissen tengwiesto "may (a) golden light fall on your book at the times of your reading" (VT49:47). In Etym defined as "light of the golden Tree Laurelin, gold", not properly used of the metal gold (LÁWAR/GLÁWAR, GLAW(-R), VT27:20, 27, PE17:159). In early "Qenya", however, laurë was defined as "(the mystic name of) gold" (LT1:255, 258) or simply "gold" (LT1:248, 268). In Laurelin and Laurefindil, q.v., Laurenandë "Gold-valley" = Lórien (the land, not the Vala) (UT:253) and laurinquë name of a tree, possibly *"Gold-full one" (UT:168). Laurendon "like gold" or "in gold fashion" (but after citing this form, Tolkien decided to abandon the similative ending -ndon, PE17:58).

malda

yellow, of golden colour

malda adj. "yellow, of golden colour" (PE17:51), variant of malina. An earlier source (the Etymologies, entry SMAL) has malda as the noun "gold" but LotR gives malta, q.v., and according to VT46:14 the form malta originally appeared in the Etymologies as well. Since Quenya sometimes uses adjectives as nouns (see for instance fanya), malda could still be regarded as a valid side-form of the noun malta "gold".

malta

gold

malta noun "gold", also name of tengwa #18 (Appendix E). The Etymologies (entry SMAL) instead has malda, q.v. for discussion, but according to VT46:14, the form malta originally appeared in the Etymologies as well. Also compare the root MALAT listed in PM:366.

mal ámë etelehta ulcullo: násië

but deliver us from evil: Amen

The tenth line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The conjunction mal “but” is followed by a combination of imperative particle á and the pronoun me “us”. This is followed by the aorist form of the verb etelehta “deliver” and ulcullo “from evil”, the ablative form of the noun ulco (perhaps a noun form of ulca). The final word násië, corresponding to English “Amen”, seems to be a Quenya word meaning “✱be it thus”.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> mal á-më ete-lehta ulcu-llo: násië = “✱but (imperative)-us out-free evil-from: amen”

Conceptual Development: The tenth line underwent more changes than any other line in the prayer. In version III of the prayer, this phrase was first written as a near match to the phrase in version IIb, but was radically altered to a form that persisted to version IV. The analysis below designates these two variations of version III as IIIa and IIIb.

In earlier versions of the prayer, the word for “but” was mostly ono (IIa-IV), though in version I it was {anat >>} one, and it was elided to on’ in version IIIa.

The earlier imperative element was either na (I-IIa) or a (IIIb-IV), and it appeared either before the verb (I-IIa, IIIb-IV) or in the middle of the verb (IIb-IIIa) as et·a·rúna.

The object pronoun me consistently appeared immediately after the verb in the versions I-IV of the prayer rather than before the verb as in version V-VI.

The early versions (I-IV) used a different verb et(e)rúna for “deliver”, still in the aorist tense but in (IIIb-IV) with an embedded imperative et·a·rúna, as noted above.

Tolkien earlier considered several words for “evil”: olca (I deleted), ulca (I), ulco (IIa) and úro (IIa-IV), the last of these possibly a noun form of úra “nasty”. These appeared either with the allative suffix -llo (I) or the preposition va “(away) from” (IIa-IV). In versions IIIb-IV only, the prepositional phrase va úro appeared before the verb rather than after.

Quenya words corresponding to “Amen” appeared only in a few versions: san na (IIa), násan (IIb) and násië (VI), each meaning something like “✱be it thus” or “✱be it so”.

| |  I  |IIa|IIb|IIIa|IIIb|IV|V|VI| |{anat >>}|one|ono|on’|ono|mal| |na etrúna me|et·a·rúna me|va úro|ám’ etelehta|áme etelehta| |{olcallo >>}|ulcallo|va ulco|{var-úra >>} va úro|aly’ eterúna me|ulcullo| | |san na|násan| |násie|

nan

but

nan conj. "but" (FS); the Etymologies also gives ná, nán (NDAN), but these words may be confused with forms of the verb "to be", so nan should perhaps be preferred, unless for "but" one uses the wholly distinct word mal. In Tolkien's later Quenya, it may be that he introduced new words for "but" to free up nan for another meaning (perhaps the adverb "back", compare the prefix nan-).

ná

but, on the contrary, on the other hand

ná (2), also nán, conj. "but, on the contrary, on the other hand" (NDAN; the form nan, q.v., is probably to be preferred to avoid confusion with ná "is", *nán "I am").

nó

but

nó (2) conj. "but" (VT41:13)

nó

conjunction. but

ono

but

ono conj. "but" (VT43:23, VT44:5/9)

ono

conjunction. but

onë

but

onë conj. "but" (VT43:23)

onë

conjunction. but

tulca

yellow

tulca (3) ("k") adj. "yellow". Adopted and adapted from Valarin; the normal Quenya word for "yellow" is rather malina (WJ:399)

manallë

adjective. how, in what manner

tyuc-

verb. to chew