Glossary (159)

Key terms of the legendarium, briefly explained.

Adûnaic: The native speech of Númenor, from which the Common Speech of Middle-earth grew.
Ages of the World: The great eras of Middle-earth's history — First, Second, Third and Fourth Age — reckoned by momentous events.
Ainulindalë: The Music of the Ainur — the great theme by which the world was first envisioned and sung into being.
Akallabêth: The Downfallen — both the name of drowned Númenor and the title of the account of its fall, told after the Silmarillion proper.
Aman: The Blessed Realm in the uttermost West, home of the Valar, removed from the circles of the world after Númenor's fall.
Angerthas: The long rune-rows developed from the Cirth, chiefly used by the Dwarves.
Aratar: The eight High Ones of Arda, greatest among the Valar: Manwë and Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna and Aulë, Mandos, Nienna and Oromë. Melkor was struck from their number.
Arda: The world set within Eä, the realm in which the history of Elves and Men unfolds.
Athelas: A healing herb, also called kingsfoil; in skilled hands it works against wounds ordinary craft cannot reach.
Athrabeth: The late dialogue of Finrod and Andreth on death and the different fates of Elves and Men — one of Tolkien's fullest statements of that difference.
Avari: The “Unwilling”: Elves who refused the call to Aman and remained in Middle-earth.
Awakening of the Elves: The hour when the first Elves woke by the water of Cuiviénen under the stars, before Sun and Moon and before Men.
Balchoth: An Easterling people out of the lands beyond Mirkwood who crossed the Anduin on rafts in 2510 and were destroyed on the Field of Celebrant.
Balrog: A demon of shadow and flame, a Maia corrupted by Melkor in the ancient days.
Ban of the Valar: The prohibition that forbade the Númenóreans to sail west out of sight of their own coasts or to set foot in Aman; Ar-Pharazôn broke it and lost his fleet and his island.
Belegaer: The ocean between Middle-earth and Aman that keeps the two apart; the Noldor crossed it in the Elder Days and the ships of Númenor sailed it.
Beornings: The Men of the vales between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood who took their name from Beorn; they hold the mountain crossing and the ford by the Carrock open for travellers.
Black Breath: The sickness that comes of nearness to the Nazgûl: the stricken sink into ever deeper dreams, grow cold and, unless healed, die.
Black Númenóreans: Men of Númenórean descent who made their homes east of the Sea while Sauron ruled there, and worshipped him.
Black Speech: The tongue Sauron devised for his servants — the only language of Middle-earth that was made rather than grown.
Bounder: Hobbits set to walk the borders of the Shire and turn strangers back; their number grew greatly before the War of the Ring.
Bucklanders: The Hobbits of Buckland east of the Brandywine under the Master of Buckland, held to be a queer folk by the rest of the Shire.
Chieftain of the Dúnedain: The title the heirs of Isildur bore in the North after the North Kingdom fell: Aranarth son of Arvedui took it first, in 1976 of the Third Age; Arathorn II held it before his son Aragorn.
Circles of the World: The bounds of time and space within which the Elves remain; Men pass beyond them when they die, and Aman was set outside them after the Downfall of Númenor.
Cirth: The runic alphabet of Middle-earth, devised for carving into wood and stone — the counterpart to the written Tengwar.
Corsairs of Umbar: The sea-raiders of Umbar, in part descended from rebel lords of Gondor, who harried its coasts for centuries and sailed up the Anduin for Sauron in the War of the Ring.
Dagor Bragollach: The Battle of Sudden Flame, fourth of the great battles of Beleriand. Morgoth broke the long siege of Angband with rivers of fire; Glaurung came at the head of it, Balrogs and the hosts of the Orcs behind.
Dagor Dagorath: The Last Battle foretold at the end of days, in which the world is to be remade.
Dagor-nuin-Giliath: The second battle of the Wars of Beleriand, fought in Mithrim before the Moon first rose; Fëanor's host routed the Orcs, but Fëanor pressed the pursuit too far and was mortally wounded.
Dark Years: The middle centuries of the Second Age, when Sauron held Middle-earth after the Rings were forged; the Elves called the same time the Days of Flight.
Doom of Mandos: The sentence Mandos spoke after the departing Noldor on the shore of Araman, foretelling betrayal, failure and that their own oath would turn against them.
Door of Night: The gate in the Walls of the World through which Morgoth was thrust out after the Great Battle, and through which Eärendil's ship is said to pass.
Drúedain: The Woses, a people of Men of the woods, small and watchful, long thought lost by others.
Dúnedain: The Men of the West — descendants of Númenor, longer-lived than other Men.
Dunlendings: Men of Dunland west of the Misty Mountains, of older stock than the Rohirrim and long at odds with them.
Dunlendish: The tongue of the Men of Dunland, left over from the peoples who once lived in the vales of the White Mountains; to the Common Speech it was alien or only distantly akin.
Eä: The universe — all of creation, called into being when Ilúvatar spoke the word Eä, “Let it be.”
Easterlings: A collective name for peoples of Men from the East, repeatedly drawn into the service of the Enemy.
Edain: Elvish for the three houses of Men who came into Beleriand in the First Age and stood with the Eldar against Morgoth. From them descended the people of Númenor.
Ekkaia: The sea outside all the shores of Arda that encircles the world; Ulmo dwells in it, and beyond it stand the Walls of Night.
Eldar: The Elves who answered the summons of the Valar and set out on the great westward journey.
Eldarin: The speech of the Eldar as a whole and the older stage from which Quenya, Telerin and Sindarin grew apart.
Elder Days: The First Age and what came before it — the time of the great wars against Morgoth.
Elf-friend: A name of honour for mortals who held with the Elves — from the houses of the Edain to hobbits such as Bilbo and Frodo.
Eorlingas: The Rohirrim as the folk of Eorl — the name that stands in their own battle-cry.
Éothéod: The horse-people of the upper vales of Anduin, led by Eorl the Young to Calenardhon; from them came the Rohirrim, and the name stood for their land as well.
Eru Ilúvatar: The One, the supreme being who alone existed before all else and who created the world and everything in it.
Fëa and Hröa: The pair of terms for soul (fëa) and body (hröa) of the Incarnate. It explains why Elves do not perish at death but wait in the Halls of Mandos.
Fell beasts: The winged mounts of the Nazgûl in the War of the Ring — featherless, and older than the age they served in.
Fell Winter: The winter of 2911–12 of the Third Age, when the Brandywine froze and wolves crossed into the Shire.
Flame Imperishable: What belongs to Ilúvatar alone and gives real being to what is only imagined; Melkor sought it in the Void and never found it.
Free Peoples: The kindreds who stood against Sauron — Elves, Men, Dwarves, Ents and Hobbits.
Galadhrim: The Elves of Lórien, called the Tree-people because they dwelt on platforms high in the mallorn-trees.
Gift of Men: Mortality — that Men leave the world entirely, a fate the Elves cannot follow and do not understand.
Girdle of Melian: The maze of enchantment Melian laid about Doriath to bar the realm against all who came without leave.
Gnomes: The English word Tolkien used in his early texts for the Noldoli, and gave up in the later work.
Great Journey: The westward march of the Eldar from Cuiviénen to the sea under Oromë's guidance; those who would not go became the Avari.
Great Plague: The pestilence that came out of the East in 1636 of the Third Age; it killed King Telemnar and his children, emptied whole districts of Gondor and thinned the guard on Mordor.
Green-elves: The Laiquendi of Ossiriand, named for the leaf-colour of their clothing, who after a heavy defeat held to concealment and never fought openly again.
Grey Annals: The late year-by-year account of Beleriand, written after The Lord of the Rings; one of the chief texts behind the Beleriand chapters of the published Silmarillion.
Guarded Realm: Valinor after the Valar closed it off: walled by the Pelóri, watched at its single pass and screened by enchanted seas.
Halflings: What Men call the Hobbits — after their height, roughly half that of a Man.
Halls of Mandos: Where the spirits of the slain Elves await; Men pass through only briefly, bound elsewhere.
Heir of Isildur: Whoever stands next in the unbroken line from Isildur — the claim on which the chieftains of the North rested, and with which Aragorn came before Gondor.
Helcaraxë: The Grinding Ice in the far north, where Middle-earth and Aman come near to one another. Fingolfin’s host crossed it on foot after Fëanor burned the ships behind him.
High Elves: The Eldar who had lived in the light of Aman — in the Third Age chiefly the exiled Noldor still dwelling in Middle-earth.
High King: The king set over other kings of the same people — among the Noldor in exile from Fingolfin to Gil-galad; among the Dúnedain, Elendil over both Arnor and Gondor.
Hither Lands: Middle-earth seen from Aman — the lands on this side of the Great Sea.
Huorn: Something between Ent and tree: watchful, able to move, and dangerous to those who are not Ents.
Istari: The order of the Wizards, Maiar sent to Middle-earth in the shape of old men to work against Sauron by counsel, not by force.
Khuzdul: The language of the Dwarves, kept secret by them and rarely revealed to outsiders.
Kin-strife: The civil war of Gondor in the fifteenth century of the Third Age, over the mixed descent of the king.
King of Rohan: The title of the rulers of Rohan from Eorl the Young, to whom Gondor gave the land, onwards; in the Mark itself they were also called Lord of the Mark. In the War of the Ring the seventeenth, Théoden, held it, and after his death on the Pelennor Éomer.
King under the Mountain: The title of Durin's heirs who held the kingdom of Erebor — lost when Smaug came, claimed again by Thorin and held after him by Dáin Ironfoot.
Kinslaying: The slaying of Elf by Elf, which happened three times among the Eldar — at Alqualondë, at Menegroth and at the Havens of Sirion — each time as Fëanor's oath worked itself out.
Last Alliance: The alliance of Elves and Men at the end of the Second Age, which overthrew Sauron and cost both kings their lives.
Lay of Leithian: Tolkien's long verse telling of Beren and Lúthien, broken off unfinished; the prose account in the Silmarillion draws on it.
legendarium: Tolkien's own word for the whole connected body of his tales of Arda, from the Music of the Ainur to the end of the Third Age.
Lembas: The waybread of the Elves, which strengthens on long roads and keeps far longer than the bread of Men.
Light of the Trees: The radiance of Telperion and Laurelin that lit Valinor before Sun and Moon; after the Trees were destroyed it remained only in the Silmarils.
Long Peace: The quiet of almost two hundred years in Beleriand after Glaurung was driven back, while the Siege of Angband still held and only border skirmishes broke it.
Long Winter: The winter of 2758–59 of the Third Age, which brought famine to Rohan and the Shire alike.
Longbeards: Durin's Folk, the eldest of the seven Dwarf houses.
Lord of Andúnië: The head of the house that ruled the western haven of Númenor and kept faith with the Eldar; from this line came Elendil.
Lord of Moria: Title of the Dwarf-lord of Khazad-dûm: the inscription on the West-gate gives it to Durin, and Balin bore it after he went into Moria in 2989 of the Third Age, until he fell there five years later.
Maia: One of the lesser spirits who came into the world with the Valar; the plural is Maiar.
Marshal of the Mark: Rohan's highest military rank, borne by the King's deputies — at first three of them — who led his trained Riders. Éomund had once been chief Marshal; in the War of the Ring Théodred was Second and Éomer Third Marshal, and Elfhelm became one when the Rohirrim mustered to ride to Gondor.
Master of Buckland: The head of the Brandybucks, who ruled Buckland, their own land east of the Brandywine on the edge of the Shire.
Mathom: A hobbit word for anything kept although it has no use — too good to throw away.
Mayor of Michel Delving: The one office of the Shire filled by election, chosen at the Free Fair; the post and the Shirriffs came with it.
Men of Dale: The Men of the town of Dale below the Lonely Mountain, ruled after its rebuilding by the line of Bard and closely bound to the Dwarves of Erebor.
Middle-earth: The central continent of Arda, the setting of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Mithril: The silver-grey metal of Moria, light and harder than steel; the Elves called it true-silver.
moon-letters: Runes that show only with the moon shining behind them — the subtler kind only under a moon like that of the day they were written.
Moriquendi: “Elves of Darkness” — the Elves who never saw the light of the Two Trees, in contrast to the Calaquendi.
Music of the Ainur: The great theme from which the world was made, and into which even Melkor's discord was woven.
Nandorin: The Elvish tongue of the Nandor, who turned aside from the Great Journey east of the Misty Mountains.
Nauglamír: The Necklace of the Dwarves, made for Finrod Felagund from the gold he had brought out of Valinor. Thingol later had the recovered Silmaril set into it, and the quarrel over this one piece cost him his life and Doriath its peace.
Nauglath: The name of the Dwarves in the Lost Tales, where they are drawn far darker than the people of the later work.
Naugrim: What the Sindar called the Dwarves — the Stunted People; beside it stood Gonnhirrim, Masters of Stone.
Nazgûl: The nine Men who took Rings of Power and became Sauron's chief servants, neither living nor dead.
Nirnaeth Arnoediad: The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, fifth of the great battles of Beleriand. The union of Elves, Men and Dwarves broke on treachery, and afterwards Morgoth held the North unopposed.
Noldo: Singular of Noldor: one Elf of the second kindred, the people of craft and lore.
Noldoli: The name of the second kindred of the Elves in the earliest form of the mythology; later revisions put Noldor in its place.
Notion Club Papers: An unfinished story in the shape of club minutes, in which Oxford men reach back to the drowning of Númenor through dream and language.
Oath of Fëanor: The vow Fëanor and his seven sons swore to pursue anyone, of any kindred, who kept a Silmaril from them; sworn in Ilúvatar's name, it could not be taken back and drove the wars of Beleriand.
Olog-hai: A breed of trolls named in the Black Speech, come up late in the Third Age south of Mirkwood and along the hills of Mordor; in body and in bearing they were not like other trolls.
Palantír: One of the Seeing-stones of Númenor, by which the far-off could be seen and, at peril, minds could meet.
Periannath: The Sindarin name for the Hobbits; the singular is Perian.
Petty-dwarves: The Noegyth Nibin, a dwindled dwarf-folk of Beleriand cast out by their own kind; Mîm on Amon Rûdh is the last of whom anything is told.
Prince of Dol Amroth: Title of the lords of Dol Amroth in Belfalas, who stayed loyal to the Stewards of Gondor; in the War of the Ring Imrahil held it, whose sister Finduilas was Denethor's wife. Tolkien's late genealogies count twenty-four princes, from Galador to Alphros.
Quendi: The oldest name the Elves gave themselves in their own tongue, meaning “those who speak”; it covers all the Elven kindreds.
Quenta Noldorinwa: The prose history of the Noldor written about 1930, which tells the whole matter of the Silmarillion in one continuous account.
Quenta Silmarillion: The long middle part of the Silmarillion: the history of the jewels and the wars of Beleriand, under a title Tolkien used from the 1930s on.
Quenya: The High-elven language of the Noldor and Vanyar, a formal tongue of lore and ceremony.
Rangers: The name the folk of Bree gave to the wandering guardians of the North, whose origin they did not know; in Gondor it belongs to the watchers of Ithilien.
Riders of Rohan: The Rohirrim under the name others use for them: the mounted people of the Mark, bound to Gondor by the oath Eorl swore.
Ring of Doom: The circle of thrones before the gates of Valmar where the Valar held council and gave judgement.
Ring of Power: A ring forged in the Second Age to preserve, to dominate or to deceive; the One Ring ruled them all.
Ring-bearer: The name for one who has carried the One Ring: Frodo on the quest, Bilbo before him and, for a short while, Sam.
Rohirric: The tongue of the Rohirrim, kin to the older speech of the Northmen and rendered in the book by Old English; the name is a later coinage, not Tolkien's own.
Ruling Queen: A queen of Númenor who held the sceptre in her own right — possible only after the law of succession was changed in Tar-Aldarion's day.
Scouring of the Shire: The last fighting of the War of the Ring — not in Mordor, but at home, after the Ring was gone.
Shire Reckoning: The hobbits' own count of years, begun with the crossing of the Brandywine; its years run 1600 behind those of the Third Age.
Shirriff: The Shire's nearest thing to a police: twelve hobbits in quiet times, three to a Farthing, marked only by a feather in the cap.
Silmaril: One of three radiant jewels wrought by Fëanor, holding the imperishable light of the Two Trees.
Sindar: The Grey-elves: those Teleri who remained in Middle-earth on the march to Aman. Their tongue is Sindarin.
Sindarin: The Grey-elven language, the most widely spoken Elvish tongue in Middle-earth.
Smials: The large, branching tunnel-dwellings of well-to-do hobbit families — a house laid out underground. Where the ground would not take them, hobbits built above it instead.
Southrons: What the Men of Gondor call the peoples of Harad, who marched north along Gondor's own roads to Sauron's muster.
Spring of Arda: The first growth of the world in the light of the Two Lamps, ended when Melkor threw them down and ruined Almaren.
Steward of Gondor: The hereditary office that ruled Gondor while no king returned — sworn to hold the rod, not the crown.
Straight Road: The path that still leads to the West for Elvish ships, after the world was bent and made round.
Summons of the Valar: The call the Valar sent to the newly woken Elves, bidding them come west to Aman; taking it or refusing it divided the kindreds.
Tale of Years: The chronicle of the Westlands put together at Great Smials and printed as Appendix B — the dating frame for the Second and Third Ages.
Teleri: The third and largest of the Elven kindreds who set out for Aman. Some reached Valinor, others stayed behind on the way.
Telerin: The tongue of the Teleri who reached Aman, so near to Quenya that some counted it a dialect of that language.
Tengwar: The flowing alphabet devised by the Elves, used to write Quenya, Sindarin and other tongues.
Thain: The hereditary head of the Shire in name, an office of the Tooks, with little to do in quiet years.
The White Council: The council of the Istari and the greatest Elven rulers, taking counsel against Sauron. Saruman leads it — and works against it at the same time.
Two Lamps: Illuin in the north and Ormal in the south, set on pillars to light Middle-earth before the Trees were made; Melkor threw them down.
Two Trees of Valinor: Telperion and Laurelin, the silver and golden trees whose light illumined Valinor before Sun and Moon.
Undying Lands: A name for Aman current among Men; it names the deathlessness of those who dwell there, not a power of the land to grant it.
Unlight: The darkness Ungoliant spun about herself: not the mere absence of light but something that swallowed it and could be felt.
Uruk-hai: The larger, stronger breed of Orcs that appeared late in the Third Age and endured daylight.
Valaquenta: The account of the Valar and the Maiar that follows the Ainulindalë in the Silmarillion — the source for almost everything told of the Powers of Arda.
Valarin: The speech of the Valar among themselves — strange to Elvish ears and little recorded.
Valier: The seven queens among the Valar: Varda, Yavanna, Nienna, Estë, Vairë, Vána and Nessa.
Valinor: The land of the Valar within Aman, where the Two Trees stood.
Vanyar: The first and smallest of the three Elven kindreds who answered the call to Aman; they never left Valinor again.
Void: The emptiness outside the Walls of the World, where Melkor searched for the Flame Imperishable and into which he was thrust after the Great Battle.
Wainriders: A people, or league of peoples, out of the East who fought Gondor for close to a hundred years and were better armed than any invader before them.
War of the Ring: The war at the end of the Third Age over the One Ring, ending with its destruction and Sauron’s fall.
Watchful Peace: The long quiet in the Third Age while Sauron kept himself hidden — peace only on the surface.
Westron: The Common Speech of Middle-earth in the Third Age; in the book it appears as English (or the language of the translation).
White Tree: The line of trees descended from Galathilion of Tirion, which was made in the image of Telperion — Nimloth in Númenor and, after it, the trees in the court of Minas Tirith.
Woodmen: A name for Men settled in forests — the folk of Brethil in the First Age, and later those living between Mirkwood and the Anduin.
Years of the Sun: The reckoning that began with the first rising of the Sun and ended the Years of the Trees; a year of the Sun is far shorter than a year of the Trees.
Years of the Trees: The long age reckoned by the waxing and waning of the Two Trees, before Sun and Moon.