Early Quenya
oryat
noun. badger
Derivations
- ᴱ√ORO “steepness, rising” ✧ QL/070
Elements
Word Gloss ORO “steepness, rising” YAPA “snarl, snap, bark ill-temperedly” Phonetic Developments
Development Stages Sources ᴱ√ORO¹ > oryat [orjap] > [orjat] ✧ QL/070
A word appearing as ᴱQ. oryat “badger” in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s under the early root ᴱ√ORO “steepness, rising” (QL/70). Tolkien marked the word with a “?” and gave it two different stem forms oryak- and oryap-. In the contemporaneous Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa, the word had only one stem form oryap-, and appeared beside a longer form oryapin, perhaps an accusative or feminine form (PE12/xxi). With this stem form, it might be a combination of ᴱ√ORO “high” with (onomatopoeic?) ᴱ√YAPA “snarl”, so perhaps originally meaning “✱high-yapper” referring to the badger’s high-pitched bark, as suggested by Lokyt in a 2021 Discord chat.
Neo-Quenya: I would retain ᴺQ. oryat (oryap-) “badger” for purposes of Neo-Quenya, with the semi-onomatopoeic derivation “✱high-yapper” suggested above.