11.13 to Take
- ᴱQ. lep- v. “to take [with fingers], *pick, pluck”
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A verb appearing in Qenya Verb Forms from the 1910s as ᴱQ. lep- “take” (PE14/28), clearly based on the early root ᴱ√LEPE having to do with fingers (QL/53).
Neo-Quenya: This root was still the basis for finger-words in Tolkien’s later writings, and in notes from the late 1960s, √LEP was glossed “pick (up/out) with the fingers” (VT47/24). As such I would retain this as the verb for “take”, but more specifically “take (with fingers)” so closer in meaning to “*pick, pluck”.
- Q. nehta- v. “to deprive”
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A verb for “deprive” in Quenya Notes (QN) from 1957, based on the root √NEK of similar meaning (PE17/163).
Conceptual Development: The Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s had ᴱQ. oista- “bereave” under the early root ᴱ√OYO (QL/71). Likely this verb was used in the Old English sense of “bereave” = “deprive of”.
- ⚠️ᴹQ. ruc- v. “to pluck”
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A verb from the Quenya Verbal System (QVS) of 1948 based on the root ᴹ√RUK “pluck” (PE22/102).
Neo-Quenya: Elsewhere √RUK was the basis for demon words like S. Balrog, so for “pluck” I would use ᴱQ. lep- which is more obviously connected to fingers.
- ᴹQ. tuvu- v. “to take, [ᴱQ.] require, cost, ⚠️receive, accept”
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The verb ᴱQ. tuvu- appeared in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s glossed “receive, accept, take, require, cost” under the early root ᴱ√TUVU (QL/96). It also appeared in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon with the gloss “receive”, given as the cognate of G. tû- “receive; take; get; become” (GL/71). The verb appeared in the 1920s Early Qenya Grammar as tuv “receive, take”, with past túvie and present tuve or tue, along with an “impersonal” variant tú (PE14/58).
Similar verb forms ᴹQ. tuvo “take” and túvie “took” appeared in the first version of Quenya Personal Pronouns (QPP1) the late 1940s (PE23/92). The aorist verb form tuvo is peculiar, but it may be in that moment Tolkien imagined this was a u-verb tuvu-, and that the aorist forms of such a u-verb was tuvo < *tuvŭ rather than tuvu < *tuvū as it was in other documents of this period such as the Quenya Verbal System (QVS) from 1948 (PE22/114).
QVS also introduced a new meaning for ᴹQ. tuve “finds” (PE22/108 note #50) in that document revised to ᴹQ. kime (PE22/108, 125), but later still Q. utúvienyes “I have found it” appeared in The Lord of the Rings. See those entries for further discussion.
Neo-Quenya: It is possible that tuvu- “receive, take” was displaced by Q. tuv- “find, discover”. However, we have no good Quenya word for “take”, so for purposes of Neo-Quenya I would retain tuvu- “take” as a u-verb, perhaps related somehow to tuv- “find” after considerable semantic drift. I would also retain the early meanings “require, cost”, as in tuvus miriani canta “it costs [takes] four mirian [a Gondorian coin]”. For “receive, accept”, I would instead use the later verb cav-.
- G. nab- v. “to take, lay hold of”
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A verb appearing as G. nab- “take, lay hold of” in the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s (GL/59), apparently derived from the early root ᴱ√NAPA which was a variant of ᴱ√MAPA “seize” (QL/59, 64). Its past form nôbi appeared in the untranslated phrase G. nôbi i·mab ’len suila ontha from the contemporaneous Gnomish Grammar, apparently “*he took the slender hand of his daughter” (GG/11).
Neo-Sindarin: Since √NAP appears in Tolkien’s later writings with glosses like “grasp, seize quickly” (VT47/20), “take hold” (VT47/27), and “take, pick up” (VT47/28), I would retain ᴺS. nab- “to take, lay hold of” for purposes of Neo-Sindarin.