Each day the good folk at the Merriam-Webster dictionary send out their word of the day.
And recently their chosen word was ‘hobbit.’
They define a ‘hobbit’ as: ‘a member of a fictitious peaceful and genial race of small, humanlike creatures that dwell underground in the stories of J. R. R. Tolkien.’
What is so interesting about this is that Tolkien himself (in his younger days) was a lexicographer at the Oxford English Dictionary (he worked on the letter ‘W’).
This was (obviously) some time before he became Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford.
And it’s not many lexicographers who start out writing for a great dictionary and end up getting their own word in that same dictionary!
And it is his own word.
Tolkien says that the word ‘Hobbit’ just came to him either out thin air—or out of the hidden depths of his own startling imagination.
The way Tolkien tells the story, he was sitting in his home study one day marking exams (one of those boring, repetitious tasks that anyone who teaches has to do from time to time).
On the student’s paper in front of him, the student had not filled the whole of the exam booklet—there was half a page of white empty paper.
Tolkien picked his marking pen and, in that space, wrote the words: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’.
And that’s where it all began.
Those are, of course, the first words in his first book The Hobbit.
That is how the magic of imagination works!
Tolkien says that when he wrote those words, he didn’t know what a hobbit was.
He didn’t know where the word had sprung from to arrive in his head.
His brain may have been influenced by such words as ‘habit’ and ‘rabbit’—but ‘hobbit’, both in structure and meaning, is strikingly original.
Here is the official Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘Hobbit’: ‘In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973): one of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal men.’
That first book (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again) featured Bilbo Baggins.
In time, this world of Middle Earth that Tolkien had imagined gave birth the massive saga of The Lord of the Rings—with Bilbo’s nephew Frodo on centre stage, surrounded by ‘the fellowship of the ring.’
Just imagine what we would have missed out on if that student (back in the 1930s) hadn’t left a half page blank in his examination booklet!
My latest chat with Peta Credlin is now online -- you can find it here: Words Matter: Kel Richards on the origin of ‘sliding doors’ | Sky News Australia
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The March-April issue of Australian Geographic is out now (with the curlew on the cover) -- inside are my two small columns on 'Placenames' and 'Ozwords'.
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
I have just taken part in Jenny Wheeler's podcast "The Joys of Binge Reading." You can listen to the conversation here:
https://thejoysofbingereading.com/kel-richards-country-house-mysteries/
I have signed the anti-Semitism pledge, and I encourage you to do the same. You can sign the letter here: www.saynotoantisemitism.org
The liveliest part of this website is usually the Q and A page -- be sure to check it out from time to time.
BOOKS:
* My latest book is -- "Defending the Gospel" (second, fully revised, edition). You can find it here: Defending the Gospel – matthiasmedia.com.au
* If you're looking for my recent book "Flash Jim" you'll find it here -- Flash Jim, The astonis
hing story of the convict fraudster who wrote Australia's first dictionary by Kel Richards | 9781460759769 | Booktopia
* You can find all Kel's books currently in print here -- Booktopia Search Results for 'kel richards'. We sell books, hardback, paperback, audio, CDs.
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