S. serni n. “shingle, pebble bank” (Category: Rock, Stone)
A noun for a “shingle, pebble bank” in The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor from the end of the 1960s from primitive ✶sarniye, the basis for the river name S. Serni (VT42/11). Here the gloss “shingle” is used in the sense of a mass of smell pebbles rather than as a roofing tile. This word is an unusual example of a final -i in Sindarin, because the i was protected by the final e that was itself lost. Tolkien indicated it might instead be an adjective formation (“pebbly”?) from the (rare) adjective suffix -i derived from primitive ✶-īya, -ēya (VT42/10-11).
References ✧ UTI/Serni; VT42/10-11
Glosses
Elements
sarn | “(small) stone, pebble, gem; stony (place)” | ✧ UTI/Serni; VT42/11 (sern) |
-i | “adjectival suffix” | ✧ VT42/10 |
Element In
Cognates
Derivations
Phonetic Developments
✶sarniye > Serni | [sarnije] > [sarnīe] > [sernīe] > [sernī] > [serni] | ✧ VT42/11 |