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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Lord of the memes
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Correct. Which gets me thinking, what are the masculine and feminine terms for elves and dwarves? Elf man and elf woman, dwarf man and dwarf woman, sounds clunky...
Maybe elf and alf, and dwarf and dwoman
"Man" is gender neutral in this sense, encapsulating the full species, so "woman" should probably be prefixed with "human"... Or man man and man woman.
I don't really like the terms "man" and "woman" for elves and dwarves anyways. How about elf "maiden" and dwarf "so similar in voice and appearance you can't tell the difference"
If you want go old school, you can say wereman and woman. English used to do this but the were- prefix fell out of use aside from werewolves and their werecousins
That's way cooler, let's go back
Yes, I'm aware of that usage of the term "Man", the meme just got me wondering.
Perhaps there's a case to be made for elves and dwarves not even having a concept of gender - as you alluded to, dwarves don't differentiate physically, so they likely don't even acknowledge it at all. A dwarf is just a dwarf.
Elves, too, are highly androgynous, so it may be a similar thing with them. Sex is definitely a thing, though, since they reproduce just like humans do. But they certainly don't seem to have a social gender division.
Surely Tolkien had thought of this.
Imagine if we had this conversation while Tolkien was still alive. We could have just send him a letter and get a detailed response.
Gimly refers to dwarf females as women during his conversation with Eowyn.