nuv-

verb. to sink, set

In Early Noldorin Word-lists of the 1920s, the entry for the noun ᴱN. nún “sinking, going down” also described a verb form “to sink, set” with 3rd. sg. neuter ný and 3rd. sg. masc. nuveg, implying a stem form ᴱN. nuv- (PE13/151). The primitive form of the noun nún was ᴱ✶numne, implying the verb was derived from ✱num-, with post-vocalic m becoming v (as was the case in Early Noldorin of the 1920s but not Gnomish of the 1910s). For 3rd-sg ný, the v vanished finally after ú > ý; Tolkien originally had a deleted letter, probably w, at the end of ný as a remnant of this change.

A likely precursor of 1920s ᴱN. nuv- was G. num- “sink, decline, slope down, descend” from the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s (GL/61) which in turn was probably based on the early root ᴱ√NUHU “bow, bend down; stoop, sink” as suggested by Christopher Tolkien (QL/68; LT1A/Númë). Earlier still Tolkien had a past form {thunci >>} nûmi “sank” in The Gnomish Grammar (PE12/11 note #25), possibly indicating another early verb ✱thug-. The form G. thug appeared unglossed in GL immediately under thugli “resin” (GL/73), so it could have been this verb or it could just have been some variant of thugli.

Neo-Sindarin: It would be difficult to salvage any of these early verbs for purposes of Neo-Sindarin. In 2018 I coined the neologism ᴺS. duia- “to descend, sink, set [of sun]”, cognate to Q. núya- “descend” and derived from ✶ndūya- of the same meaning.