Tolkien was uniquely placed to influence the vocabulary of modern English. In one sense, he was the last of the Victorians; he did not really live in the Victorian era, but was born at the tail end of it and carried along some of those traditions. Amongst those is a certain sense of propriety and conservatism and, I think, a love for being English; something that seemed to wane after the trauma of the World Wars. He had a deep passion for antiquity and ancient European languages, a love for the aesthetics of language (philology), and care for the natural world. As such, he included many older words we now rarely use to describe geographical features, at least in modern American English, and many plants we may not be familiar with.With an interest in those words, I’ve compiled here a list of geographical terms we see in the Lord of the Rings. Enjoy!
Barrow – a tumulus, a large mound of earth or stone placed over a burial site
Bog – Undrained depressions full of peat (moss) and evergreen shrubs
Bog – Undrained depressions full of peat (moss) and evergreen shrubs
Bracken – fields of fern plants. Grows well under mixed woodland and equally in open moors. Common enough to define the colour of the highland landscape as green in spring and summer, brown in autumn and winter.
Causeway – a road across a broad body of water or wetland raised up on an embankment
Dale/Dell – valley, vale
Dike – embankment constructed to control water, earthwork, rampart, canal
Dingle– small wooded hollow
Down – hill, typically with a bare top; hilly upland country
Eyot – small island in a river or lake
Fen – Marsh; A habitat composed of woodland and swamp.
Firth – long, narrow estuary
Fosse – Ditch or moat
Freshet – a freshwater stream flowing into the sea
Glen – Small, narrow, secluded valley
Gore – a triangular tract of land, especially one lying between larger divisions.
Heath – tract of open and uncultivated land; wasteland overgrown with shrubs.
Heather – any of various heaths having small, pinkish-purple flowers. Dominates the landscape of a typical moor. Flowers for about two weeks (fortnight) as summer turns to autumn with vibrant pink/purple blooms.
Hythe – port, small haven
Marsh – Treeless wetlands with tall grass/sedge/cattail growth
Mead – archaic word for meadow
Mere – a small often deep body of water
Promontory – A high point of land extending into a body of water, headland; cliff
Sedge – Cyperaceae family of flowering plants, resembling grasses or rushes
Sloe – “Blackthorn” plant; Prunus spinosa; a large deciduous shrub. Synonymous with it’s fruit Sloeberry.
Swamp – Wetlands characterized by the presence of trees in mucky soil
Sward – a stretch of turf; a growth of grass.
Tussock – tuft, cluster of grass
Whin – any thorny or prickly shrub
Wold – treeless rolling high plain
Causeway – a road across a broad body of water or wetland raised up on an embankment
Dale/Dell – valley, vale
Dike – embankment constructed to control water, earthwork, rampart, canal
Dingle– small wooded hollow
Down – hill, typically with a bare top; hilly upland country
Eyot – small island in a river or lake
Fen – Marsh; A habitat composed of woodland and swamp.
Firth – long, narrow estuary
Fosse – Ditch or moat
Freshet – a freshwater stream flowing into the sea
Glen – Small, narrow, secluded valley
Gore – a triangular tract of land, especially one lying between larger divisions.
Heath – tract of open and uncultivated land; wasteland overgrown with shrubs.
Heather – any of various heaths having small, pinkish-purple flowers. Dominates the landscape of a typical moor. Flowers for about two weeks (fortnight) as summer turns to autumn with vibrant pink/purple blooms.
Hythe – port, small haven
Marsh – Treeless wetlands with tall grass/sedge/cattail growth
Mead – archaic word for meadow
Mere – a small often deep body of water
Promontory – A high point of land extending into a body of water, headland; cliff
Sedge – Cyperaceae family of flowering plants, resembling grasses or rushes
Sloe – “Blackthorn” plant; Prunus spinosa; a large deciduous shrub. Synonymous with it’s fruit Sloeberry.
Swamp – Wetlands characterized by the presence of trees in mucky soil
Sward – a stretch of turf; a growth of grass.
Tussock – tuft, cluster of grass
Whin – any thorny or prickly shrub
Wold – treeless rolling high plain
Loading ...
This is very helpful. Thanks Ship!
This is an interesting list. But as an Englishman. who was once a country boy that somehow ended up in the USA I’d like to point out that more than half those words are still modern in use by us rural folk. 🙂 Please indulge me while I expand and add a few more from my daily vocabulary:
Downs/Wold – aka highland or moor/moorland. High, wet, cold and windy enough that the usual grasses and deciduous trees can’t grow. Heather and hawthorn/blackthorn dominate. Typically sandy soil, poor for agriculture and less resilient plants. River valleys are typically mixed woodland.
Heather – A small, robust bushy plant that grows in highlands/moors, ubiquitously enough to dominate the landscape of a typical moor. It flowers for about two weeks (fortnight) as summer turns to autumn with vibrant pink/purple blooms, entire landscapes change from deep browns and greens to vibrant purple for a short time. The flowers are aromatic enough to make tourists and locals alike open their car windows as they drive around in the scented air.*
* There’s a Scottish ale brewed with heather flowers following (I’m told) an ancient technique. To anyone that’s lived in Britain’s highlands and can locate this rare brew it’s like uncorking the last days of summer.
Bracken – fields of fern plants. They grow well under mixed woodland and equally in open moors. Common enough to define the colour of the highland landscape as green in spring and summer, brown in autumn and winter.
Sloe – Synonymous with it’s fruit Sloeberry, a not especially pleasant taste – but can be enhanced by steeping it in gin for a few months to make sloe gin, a delicious and warming alcoholic drink.
Mead – An archaic alcoholic drink brewed with honey.
Cider – An alcoholic drink brewed from pressed apples too poor for consumption or sale. Ranges from sweet to very dry (sharp) depending on the apples pressed and brewing technique.
Thank you for writing all this out!
Yes, thanks! I’ll have to update this list with your additions.
Dun would be a good addition too: is a generic term for an ancient or medieval fort. It is mainly used in the British Isles to describe a kind of hill fort.
Very, very helpful. One of the most charming things about Tokien’s prose, for me, is his brilliant (and often tongue in cheek) use of English. In his collected letters, he talks about the name Baggins…as being the phonetic spelling of middle-class British word for sack lunch…a bagging (or we might say, bagging it for lunch). So it was a nod of the head to a (then – children lit) funny little character that when read aloud would have a funny name to an English child. Most Americans (including me) would have missed that little connection entirely.