Did Tolkien invent the word "dwarves"

[Monica]

[Marcus_P_Hagen]

Hi, Monica:

Oh, I was sort of being silly, as well. Sometimes I like to throw something out as a debating point -- it's not always something I can (or will) support.

In the case of Tolkien working on the OED, though, it gave me an opportunity to take a shot at the "it's not in the dictionary" argument. I've always thought that was a rather lame argument, since dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive. If we always held to dictionary usages and words, then there would be no new words coined, and slang would be impossible.

Marcus

[alecto]

The archaic plurals of both "Elf" and "Dwarf" have the V. Since Tolkien wanted the archaic senses for the characters, he chose the archaic spellings. I.e. he wanted Dwarves like those in Germanic myth, not like those in Disney's Cinderella. He wanted the magical Elves of myth, not the little elfs of then-modern fairy-tales. The adjectives work the same way. Tolkien got beat the dictionary too, so to speak. He changed the OED plurals of both words to match his historical information, and last I knew, you could read a little Tolkien essay on the uses of "elf", "elves", "elfin", and "elven" at his OED entry for "Elf".

[A#minor]

[carol]