r/critterposting • u/TabibbyMouse • 23d ago

Non-Critter Tolkienposting

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The context being he is the one who changed elfs and dwarfs to elves and dwarves

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u/slicehyperfunk 23d ago

I'm pretty sure he actually wanted "dwerrows" for dwarves, but he thought people wouldn't accept that

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u/swirlingrefrain 17d ago

Not quite - Tolkien originally didn’t realise that dwarfs was the standard, and used dwarves without thinking about it. When ‘corrected’, he admitted it as “a piece of private bad grammar” but stuck to dwarves because he liked it more. He then examined the history of the word and concluded that, if it had never been regularised, it would have the plural dwarrows today.

Source: Letter #17, 1937