Obviously, the mythical dwarves have been around for centuries before Tolkien was even conceived, but the actual word dwarves was, if not invented, at least vastly popularized by the professors works. Prior to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and even today, the standard plural of dwarf is dwarfs. These days, dwarves is more likely to be used in a fantasy context, whereas dwarfs is used for more technical elements, such as white dwarfs in astronomy. In Tolkiens time, the only real acceptable plural was dwarfs, which Tolkien did not want to use for his dwarves. This was because he was reluctant to have his dwarves a proud and powerful people be associated with nonsense-stories in which they are belittled as mere figures of fun. So to retain the dwarves dignity, Tolkien used dwarves to refer to them, although he conceded later that the word dwarrows, a now-obsolete plural of dwarf, would have been better. Much to his chagrin, the original editors of the works kept correcting his decision back to dwarfs, as well as other words like elvish to elfish and, worst of all, elven to elfin. Seems to us that the professor had a bit of a gripe with the letter F.
1. The Hobbit Had To Be Reworked To Fit Rings
In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins unknowingly acquires the One Ring through a riddle match with Gollum, who in the version we all know, is loathe to lose it, under complete sway of the rings power. This, however, was not always the case. In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum actually bets the ring himself on the outcome of the riddle game, which makes no sense now that we know of the corrupting influence that the One Ring has; so, in the second edition, it was reworked to match The Lord of the Rings, so that Bilbo found the ring before the game. In the first edition, Gollums personality is also far less aggressive and wretched compared to the next edition, after Tolkien reworked the book to better align with Rings, adding Gollums obsession and fury as a symptom of the Rings power. Another seemingly minor reworking is the changing of the name of a race: the High Elves used to be Gnomes in the first edition, from the Greek word for knowledge, which was changed due to the counteractive association of the term to garden gnomes. Good thinking, John.
Canadian student. Spends probably an unhealthy amount of time enthusing over musicals, unpopular TV shows, and Harry Potter. Main life goal: to become fluent in Elvish.
