tollë

noun. island, (steep) isle

The most common Quenya word for isle or island, appearing in both a short form tol (toll-) and longer form tolle, an element in many names. Strictly speaking it only “applied to those [islands] that rose up from the water with sudden and sheer sides” (VT47/28), but in practice it seems to have been used for all kinds of islands. Its short form tol was used as pseudo-prefix in names (VT47/13, 28) such as Tol Eressëa and Tol Uinen, and thus in more ordinary phrases its longer form tolle is more likely.

Conceptual Development: This word dates all the way back to the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s where ᴱQ. tol (toll-) appeared with the gloss “an island, any rise standing alone in water, plain of grass, etc.” derived from the root ᴱ√TOLO (GL/94). It appeared as toll- “isle” in the Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa (PME/94) and as tolle “island” in Early Qenya Word-lists of the 1920s beside its shorter form tol (PE16/139).

In The Etymologies of the 1930s it appeared as ᴹQ. tol “island” as a derivative of primitive ᴹ✶tollo (Ety/TOL²). It appeared several times in notes on Eldarin Hands, Fingers and Numerals from the late 1960s, in one place as short tol < ✶tollă (VT47/26 note #35), but Tolkien gave a more complete description in the final version of these documents:

> TOL “stand up (out and above neighbouring things)” ... A frequent topographical application was to islands that rose up from the water (sea or river) with sheer sides ... Cf. Q. tolle “a steep isle”. This was used in form Tol- as a prefix to the isle’s name: as in Tol-eressea (VT47/10 and p. 13 note #14).

tollë

steep isle

tollë noun "a steep isle". Another meaning, "thumb", was apparently abandoned by Tolkien (VT47:13, 26)

tollë

noun. thumb

tolpë

thumb

tolpë noun "thumb" (VT47:28, VT48:8), a form Tolkien may have rejected in favour of nápo, q.v.

tolpë

noun. thumb

tol

island, isle

tol noun "island, isle" (rising with sheer sides from the sea or from the river, SA:tol, VT47:26). In early "Qenya", the word was defined as "island, any rise standing alone in water, plain of green, etc" (LT1:269). The stem is toll-; the Etymologies as published in LR gives the pl. "tolle" (TOL2), but this is a misreading for tolli (see VT46:19 and compare LT1:85). The primitive form of tol is variously cited as ¤tolla (VT47:26) and ¤tollo (TOL2).

tol

noun. island, (steep) isle

toltil

thumb

[toltil noun "thumb" (VT47:26)]

toltil

noun. thumb

tollesta

noun. archipelago

@@@ Discord 2022-07-18

tar-

verb. to stand

The root √TAR is translated “stand” in notes from around 1967 (PE17/186), and its past form tarne “stood” appears in a sentence from the same document: sanome tarne Olórin, Aracorno... “there stood Gandalf, Aragorn...” (PE17/71).

Conceptual Development: Early Qenya Word-lists of the 1920s had ᴱQ. hyā- “stand” (PE16/132). The Quenya Verbal System (QVS) of 1948 had a past form ᴹQ. tolle “stood” (PE22/117) and an inceptive verb ᴹQ. tolu- “stand up” (PE22/114) clearly based on ᴹ√TOL (Ety/TOL²), but later in the same document had ᴹQ. thar- “stand” based on the root ᴹ√THAR (PE22/126), probably a precursor to later tar- “stand” < √TAR.

lóna

island, remote land difficult to reach

lóna (2) noun "island, remote land difficult to reach" (LONO (AWA) ). Obsoleted by #1 above?

nápo

thumb

nápo noun "thumb" (VT47:10, VT48:4, 5). Compare nápat.

tolmo

thumb

[tolmo noun "thumb", rejected by Tolkien in favour of nápo (VT48:15)]

tyul-

verb. to stand

A neologism coined by Alex Grigny de Castro in PPQ (PPQ) from the early 2000s, based on the root ᴹ√TYUL “stand up (straight)”, along with an intransitive variant ᴺQ. tyulya- and a transitive form ᴺQ. tyulta- (inspired by ᴱQ. tyulta-) suggested by Helge Fauskanger. I’d stick to attested tar- instead for “stand (intr.)”, which was published in 2007.