raf-

verb. to wave, brandish, [ᴹQ.] to snatch, seize; to wave, brandish

A verb that first appeared in the Outline of Phonetic Development (OP1) from the 1940s as ᴹQ. raphe “seizes”, with past tense rappe “seized” illustrating the phonetic development of mph to pp (PE19/45). The verb reappeared in the Quenya Verbal System (QVS) from 1948 as a derivative of the root ᴹ√RAPH “snatch”, again to illustrate the past tense of basic verbs whose stems primitively ended in ph (PE22/102).

The verb appeared yet again in the Outline of Phonology (OP2) from the early 1950s illustrating the same sound change, but there Tolkien changed the gloss of the verb to “waves, brandishes” (PE19/89). In green-ink revisions to OP2 from around 1970, Tolkien gave the meaning of the root as √RAPH “seize, grab” with a derived noun arpo “seizer, thief” (PE19/89 and note #101), so it seems the meaning “brandish” was a transient idea.

Neo-Quenya: For purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would use raf- to mean “snatch, seize” based on the restored 1970 meaning of the root.

raf-

verb. snatch

rapa-

verb. to snatch

A neologism for “snatch” coined by Helge Fauskanger for his NQNT (NQNT), possible based on the (deleted) meaning “handle hastily, snatch, grab” of the early root ᴱ√RAPA from the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s.