A verb in the Ortírielyanna prayer from the 1950s, in the phrase alalyë nattira arcandemmar sangiessemman “despise not our petitions in our necessities” (VT44/5). According to the editors, it is likely a combination of √DAT “down” [strengthened to ✱ndat-] and √TIR “look”, so more literally “look down on”, patterned after the etymology of English (and Latin) “despise” (VT44/8). In a 2025-06-16 post to the Vinyë Lambengolmor Discord Server (VLDS), Vyacheslav Stepanov suggested it might also mean “✱ignore”.
Quenya
nattira-
verb. despise
nattira-
verb. to despise, to despise, *ignore
alalyë nattira arcandemmar sangiessemman
despise not our petitions in our necessities
The second line of Ortírielyanna, Tolkien’s translation of the Sub Tuum Praesidium prayer. The first word alalyë is 2nd-person-polite form of the negative imperative ála “[do] not”. The second word nattira is the aorist/infinitive form of the verb nattira- “to despise”.
The third word arcandemmar “our petitions” is the 2nd-plural-exclusive-possessive (-mma “our”) plural form of arcandë “petition”. The last word sangiessemman “in our necessities” is the 2nd-plural-exclusive-possessive (-mma “our”) locative (-ssë “in”) plural form of sangië “necessity”. In these two words, the final -r and -n mark the nouns as plural: “petitions” and “necessities”, respectively.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> a-la-lye nattira arcande-mma-r sangie-sse-mma-n = “✱do-not-thou despise petition-our-(plural) necessity-in-our-(plural)”
Conceptual Development: The word arca·ndemmar was first written anarcandemman, ending with a plural marker -n instead of -r and with a prefix, possibly the intensive prefix an- (VT44/8). The order of the first three words was changed: anarcandemman alalye nattira >> alalye nattira arca·ndemmar (VT44/5). A seperator “·” appeared in the word arca·ndemmar, dividing the word arca·nde into is constituent elements: arca- “pray” and an abstract noun ending -ndë (VT44/8).
The form sangie-sse-mma-n is unusual in that it places the locative suffix -ssë (“in”) before the possessive suffix -mma (“our”). Elsewhere the possessive suffix usually preceded the case suffix. A similar construction appears in some rejected forms in Tolkien’s Átaremma prayer from the same time period (VT43/20): see the entry possessive pronouns on for discussion. This construction may explain the use of the plural marker -n instead of the more typical -r, since the plural of the locative suffix -ssë was -ssen (Plotz).
nattira- vb. "despise" (or perhaps the stem proper should only be #nattir-)(VT44:8)