Talk:hobbit
"The word hobbit has an unknown origin. However, as designating a diminutive legendary creature"
How does that square with
Proposed etymology
By Tolkien's own account, the coining of the name hobbit was a spontaneous flash of intuition. When he was busy grading examination papers, the word popped into his mind,
Capitalization edit
It should be noted that in Tolkien's works, Hobbit is a proper noun and thus is always capitalized just like he capitalizes all the other races.
- No, it's a capitalized common noun. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).
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The etymology section is basically an entire encyclopedia article. --WikiTiki89 11:05, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
- I was able to find the referenced publication, which contains the word, but it seems to be totally unrelated. The choice would be either to delete the earlier usage from the entry altogether, or to create a third etymology for it. The mere appearance of the term in a list of ghosts and spirits is a rather weak mention, but seems to point to actual usage in some local dialect. I'm not so sure it's enough. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
- Looks good now --WF on Holiday (talk) 07:03, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
- Unless there is any evidence that Denham meant by 'hobbits' the same general thing that Tolkien meant, then it is manifestly inaccurate to include the Denham quote under the first definition. I have added the 19th century Denham four-page "list-sentence" to the citations page in brackets to show that I don't mean it as an actual citation while not ignoring the faint possibility that the word may have existed on some level pre-Tolkien. I find it interesting that the word 'mannikin' ('little man') is seven words away from the word 'hobbit', which leads me to believe that the word 'mannikin' could have inspired or influenced the word 'hobbit' if Tolkien did indeed take the word 'hobbit' from here. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:24, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Deleting entries other than English when it is only about Tolkien's fictional race? edit
Shouldn't other instances of the words be removed from this page in stances where they are simply used for Tolkien's fictional race and only else? Such as the Hungarian entry? And perhaps we could then add pronunciations, with audio pronunciations as well, if we have any, to the list of translations? Or are we supposed to have both the translations in the translations list and the entries (granted we make them)? Is that alright to do? --Luka1184 (talk) 10:05, 4 September 2020 (UTC)