Eldamo : Sindarin : carth

S. #carth n. “deed” (Category: Action)

S. #carth, n. “deed” (Category: Action): G. cara “deed, act”; S. #carn “deed”

Sindarin noun for a “deed”, attested only in its lenited plural form gerth within the word úgarth “trespass” (VT44/28), which probably more literally means “*misdeed”. This word is not completely compatible with its Quenya cognate Q. carda “deed” from primitive ✶kardā, which in Sindarin should produce *cardh. Perhaps the Sindarin word had a slightly different primitive form *✶kartā. The expect form cardh might appear as an element in the variant form athragardh of S. athragared “interaction”.

Conceptual Development: Perhaps the earliest precursor of this word is G. carm “act, deed, exploit” in the Gnomish Lexicon from the 1910s (GL/25; PE13/111), cognate of contemporaneous ᴱQ. karma “shape, fashion; act, deed” (QL/45). In the Early Noldorin word lists from the 1920s, this word was revised to ᴱN. carbh “deed” (PE13/140), reflecting Tolkien’s changing conception of the phonetic development of final -m in Noldorin. In The Etymologies from the 1930s, the word appeared as N. carth or carð “deed” (cardh), but these forms were rejected and replaced by N. car(ð) “building” (Ety/KAR).