This root appeared in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s as ᴱ√QARA “care for, guard, watch (over)” along with derivatives ᴱQ. qāra “watch, ward”, ᴱQ. qārele “watchfulness, anxiety”, and Gnomish variant gwar- (QL/76). In the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon G. gwar- appear with the gloss “watch (all senses)” with an apparent primitive form u̯ar “guard” (GL/46). This may represent a conceptual shift from primitive {ᴱ✶gʷar- >>} ᴱ✶war-, with earlier Qenya kʷar- being the result of the usual change whereby initial voiced stops were unvoiced [gʷ- > kʷ-]. Further evidence of this shift may be found in ᴱQ. Varavilindo, Qenya cognate of G. Gwarbilin “Birdward(en)” (GL/70), where the Qenya form was the result of w becoming v.

The most notable derivative of this root was G. gwareth “watch, guard, ward” as in G. Amon Gwareth “Hill of Watch” (LT2/158), a name that retained this form and meaning into Silmarillion drafts of the early 1930s (SM/137). In the mid-1930s, Tolkien considered changing the name to N. Amon Thoros (LR/56), but ultimately retained this name as S. Amon Gwareth into the 1950s, though without translation (WJ/200; S/126). It is thus possible this early root ᴱ√(G)WARA “guard” survived, but it just as likely that the name Amon Gwareth survived without being given a proper etymology in the Elvish languages as Tolkien imagined them in the 1950s and 60s.