wan

root. depart, go away, disappear, vanish

A root in The Etymologies of the 1930s glossed “depart, go away, disappear, vanish” with derivatives like ᴹQ. vanwa “gone, departed, vanished, lost, past” and N. gwann “departed, dead” (Ety/WAN). It was revised in pencil to ᴹ√VAN. The 1930s root is probably a later iteration of unglossed ᴱ√VAHA in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s which was an elaboration of ᴱ√AVA “go away, depart, leave”, and had derivatives like ᴱQ. vand- “way, path”, ᴱQ. vandl “staff”, and ᴱQ. vanwa “gone, on the road, past, over, lost” (QL/99). It also had derivatives in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon such as G. bâ “away, off”, G. bad- “travel”, and G. bang “staff” (GL/21).

In later writings, Q. vanwa was derived from the invertible root √WĀ/AWA; in the 1930s there is no indication that ᴹ√AWA “away” was invertible, so perhaps inversion √WĀ (WJ/366) can be considered the conceptual descendant of ᴹ√WAN and ᴱ√VAHA. For a time in the 1940s and 1950s, Q. vanwa was derived instead from √BA(N) “go, proceed” (PE22/97; PE17/16), but this root was abandoned in 1959. Thus, perhaps the full evolution was 1910s ᴱ√VAHA >> 1930s ᴹ√WAN >> ᴹ√VAN >> 1940s-50s √BA(N) >> 1960s √WĀ.

wān

noun. goose

thindi

adjective. pallid, grey, wan

smal

root. yellow

smalinā

adjective. yellow

smalwā

adjective. fallow, pale

gengwa

root. sick

A root in The Etymologies of the 1930s glossed “sick” with derivatives ᴹQ. engwa/N. gem “sickly” (Ety/GENG-WĀ). It was given as ᴹ√GENG-WĀ, and thus represented an extension of an otherwise unattested root ᴹ√GENG. In the entry for ᴹ√YEN from The Etymologies it appeared as ᴹ√GEM in the discussion of N. ingem “old, (lit.) year-sick” (EtyAC/YEN), but I believe this represents the Noldorin phonetic developments of the true primitive form rather than a conceptual variation. The continued appearance of Q. Engwar in The Silmarillion narratives of the 1950s and 60s hints that this root may have remained valid as well.

span

root. white