carco

crow

[carco ("k")noun "crow" (KARKA)] (Changed by Tolkien to corco.)

corco

crow

corco ("k")noun "crow" (KORKA, see KARKA)

quáco

crow

quáco ("q")noun "crow" _(WJ:395; _Etym also has corco, q.v.)

quáco

noun. crow

A word in the Quendi and Eldar essay from 1959-60 for “crow”, derived from primitive ✶k(a)wāk (WJ/395). In notes from the late 1960s Tolkien instead had Q. {koake >>} quácë “frog” < ✶kāwāk, with primitive ✶kā for “crow” (VT47/36).

See ᴹQ. korko for a discussion of earlier forms.

Derivations

• ✶kawāk “crow” ✧ WJ/395
  • √KAWAK “*caw, croak”

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
✶k(a)wāk > quáko	[kwāko]	✧ WJ/395

Variations

• quáko ✧ WJ/395

craban

noun. kind of crow of large size, raven

craban

noun. bird of crow-kind, *raven

A noun for a large crow-like bird, appearing in its plural form crebain in The Lord of the Rings (LotR/285). Its singular form craban was given in notes on Words, Phrases and Passages from the Lord of the Rings from the late 1950s or early 1960s, where Tolkien described it as “a bird of the crow-kind” and said it was “not an ancient Sindarin word, and probably a loan from some Mannish tongue of NW or from some non-Eldarin Elvish of the same region” (PE17/37). Jim Allen noted its similarity proto-Germanic ✱khrabanaz (An Introduction to Elvish, p. 75). The exact species isn’t clear, but it might be a kind of raven.

corch

crow

corch (i gorch, o chorch), pl. cyrch (i chyrch). Also *craban (i graban, o chraban), pl. crebain (i chrebain). Only the pl. crebain* is attested. The sg. could be either craban, creban or croban**, but the first of these seems the most likely.

corch

crow

(i gorch, o chorch), pl. cyrch (i chyrch). Also ✱craban (i graban, o chraban), pl. crebain (i chrebain). Only the pl. crebain is attested. The sg. could be either ✱craban, ✱creban or ✱croban, but the first of these seems the most likely.

khô

noun. crow

A noun translated “crow” (SD/426). Tolkien listed this noun in two forms, khâu and khô, both as examples of seemingly uniconsonantal nouns that prehistorically were biconsonantal (from prehistoric ✶khaw). Most authors have suggested these are simply variations on the same noun illustrating different paths of phonetic development (AAD/18, AL/Adûnaic). Another interesting possibility is that khâu is an (archaic?) subjective form of khô, produced from the usual a-fortification of primitive ✶khaw → ✶khāw, which would develop phonetically in Classical Adûnaic to khâu and khô. As support for this idea, the plural form of khâu is given as khāwī(m), which appears to include the subjective plural suffix -im.

This line of reasoning is quite speculative. Nevertheless, it is probably easier to use the form khô over khâu, since the inflections of khô would be more regular: plural khôi, dual ✱khôwat, objective ✱khôwu, etc.

Derivations

• ✶Ad. khaw “crow” ✧ SD/426; SD/426

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
✶Ad. khāw > khâu	[khāw] > [khāu]	✧ SD/426
✶Ad. khăw > khō	[khaw] > [khau] > [khō]	✧ SD/426

Variations

• khō ✧ SD/426

kawāk

noun. crow

Derivations

• √KAWAK “*caw, croak”

Derivatives

• Q. quáco “crow” ✧ WJ/395

Variations

• kā ✧ VT47/36
• k(a)wāk ✧ WJ/395

corch

noun. crow

corch

noun. crow

A noun in The Etymologies of the 1930s glossed “crow” derived from the root ᴹ√KORKA of the same meaning, replacing rejected N. carach derived from ᴹ√KARKA (Ety/KARKA).

Conceptual Development: The Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s had G. crunc “crow”, probably related to G. crug “beak” (GL/27) and possibly also to ᴱQ. karon “crow” from the contemporaneous Qenya Lexicon (QL/45). The forms crunc and crwnc “crow” appeared in Gnomish Lexicon Slips modifying that document (PE13/111), and ᴱN. crunc “crow” appeared in Early Noldorin Word-lists of the 1920s (PE13/141). The word ᴱN. corch also appeared in the same Early Noldorin Word-lists, but was unglossed, so it is not clear whether it was connected to 1930s N. corch “crow”.

Changes

• carach → corch “crow” ✧ Ety/KARKA

Cognates

• ᴹQ. korko “crow” ✧ Ety/KARKA; Ety/KARKA

Derivations

• ᴹ√KORKA “crow” ✧ Ety/KARKA; Ety/KARKA

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
ᴹ√KORKA > corch	[korka] > [korkʰa] > [korxa] > [korx]	✧ Ety/KARKA

Variations

• carach ✧ Ety/KARKA (carach)