Backyard Professor
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2025
- Messages
- 210
I ran into a Sindarin neologism and had a few thoughts I thought I'd share, especially about rostor, which I saw glossed as “rainforest.”
The form itself isn’t really the issue, but doesn’t it feel like the word is being asked to have a very modern idea? Tolkien usually seems to describe experienced qualities rather than ecological classifications like this. If that’s the case, there may be more than one way to express what we mean by “rainforest.”
I tried thinking it through along those lines and came up with a few possibilities. For a forest that’s very wet and gets constant rain, wouldn’t taur loew work? It literally means “mossy forest,” which feels like a natural result of a heavily soaked environment. Taur loen would say something similar as well (cf. VT 42:10).
If the emphasis were instead on density and overgrowth, something like taur dôl might work — a dark, hidden, shaded forest. And for something lush, alive, and full of growth, taur galas feels like a good fit.
Seen this way, Sindarin seems to describe forests by wetness, growth, darkness, and life rather than by modern categories.
The form itself isn’t really the issue, but doesn’t it feel like the word is being asked to have a very modern idea? Tolkien usually seems to describe experienced qualities rather than ecological classifications like this. If that’s the case, there may be more than one way to express what we mean by “rainforest.”
I tried thinking it through along those lines and came up with a few possibilities. For a forest that’s very wet and gets constant rain, wouldn’t taur loew work? It literally means “mossy forest,” which feels like a natural result of a heavily soaked environment. Taur loen would say something similar as well (cf. VT 42:10).
If the emphasis were instead on density and overgrowth, something like taur dôl might work — a dark, hidden, shaded forest. And for something lush, alive, and full of growth, taur galas feels like a good fit.
Seen this way, Sindarin seems to describe forests by wetness, growth, darkness, and life rather than by modern categories.
