minor geekage

[wombat1138]

Recently I came across the word "antetelarian", which (as determined after some lookups) seems to be nonced to mean "before the existence of the web" via the semi-archaic word "telary" based on the late Latin telaris from the classical tela ("web"; etymologically related to "textile" and also "text"). So Tolkien's sea-elves, the Teleri, are homonymous with the woven nets they may've used for fishing...?

(My 1921 Compact Oxford Dictionary doesn't have "telary", though tangentially it does list "telamon" as the male equivalent of a caryatid; I'd thought that boy-type caryatids were atlantides, but based on Google stats, the proper form is "atlantes" as the plural of "atlas". I knew I should've tried to learn ancient Greek at some point. Meanwhile, this book's binding is not in good shape; the endboards are fine but the spine is worn down to the papers. Any suggestions for holding it together? My first impulse is to apply duct tape, but somehow I doubt that its adhesive is properly acid-free and all that, though neither are the delicately crispy pages, whose edges make me suddenly crave croissants.)

Comments

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

So Tolkien's sea-elves, the Teleri, are homonymous with the woven nets they may've used for fishing...?

Well, they kind of have to be. Were they anteTelerian, they would only exist in a time before their nets did, and thus might get hungry.