Dwarrowdelf

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The vast underground halls, tunnels and mines hollowed out of rock by dwarves, as in J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction
2. Subterranean workings and delved caverns created by the labor of dwarves within mountains, especially the great mines of Moria
3. Mountain halls and excavated passages cut into stone by dwarven craftsmen, the mighty underground realms of Tolkien's Middle-earth

Etymology: Tolkien coined this word for "The Lord of the Rings", where Gandalf uses it in the Mines of Moria to mean the vast underground halls the dwarves dug out. It was built from two archaic English parts. "Dwarrow" is an old-fashioned plural of "dwarf," the form Tolkien chose to sound older than the modern "dwarves." "Delf" is a word meaning digging or delving, related to "delve" and to the older noun for a quarry or pit. Joined together, the parts make a compound that reads like a line from an old poem. The word is deliberately archaic, so it suggests ancient craft and mining rather than any modern industry. Tolkien often built names this way, using real English roots and older grammatical forms to create a sense of a language with a long past.