The seventh line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word is ar “and”, followed by a combination of the imperative particle á and the (dative) second person plural pronoun men “[for] us”. Next follows apsene, the aorist form of the verb apsen- “forgive”. The final word úcaremmar “our trespasses” is the first person plural exclusive possessive form of úcarë, with the usual plural suffix -r indicating the possessed noun was also plural (“trespasses” as opposed to “trespass”).
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ar á-me-n apsenë úcare-mma-r = “✱and (imperative)-us-for forgive trespass-our-(plural)”
Conceptual Development: Earlier versions of the prayer used a different verb avatyar- for “forgive”, in what was probably a suffixed imperative form avatyara (I-IIa) or ávatyara (IIb-IV). In version I-IV, this was followed by the ablative form mello “[from] us” of the pronoun me.
Earlier versions of the prayer used a variety of words for “trespass”: lucassë (I), lucië (IIa-IIb), luhta (III-IV deleted) and rohta (III-IV). Most instances used the same possessive suffix -mma “our” as the final verion of the prayer, but version III used an independent pronoun menya, in its plural form menye to agree with the plural noun “trespasses”.
| I |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |ar| |avatyara|ávatyara|ámen| |mello|apsene| |lucassemmar|i luciemmar|menye {luhtar >>} rohtar|{luhtammar >>} rohtammar|úcaremmar|
#úcarë noun "debt, trespass" (úcaremmar "our debts, our trespasses", VT43:19). The related words #úcar- "to sin" and #úcarindo "sinner" would suggest that #úcarë can also be translated "sin". One may question whether the simplex form is #úcarë or just #úcar (+ -e- as a mere connecting vowel before the pronominal ending in úcaremmar), but compare lacarë, hrúcarë.