√KHOT¹ root. “gather, together in confusion, jumble”
This root and its variants meant something like “gather” for much of Tolkien’s life. The earliest form of this root was given as ᴱ√HOSO in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s with variant form XOÞ-, the latter more representative of its true form (IPA [xoθ-]) given its Gnomish form hoth (QL/41). This early form was unglossed but had derivatives like ᴱQ. hos (host-) “folk, people, tribe”, G. hoth “folk, people, †army” and G. hosta- “gather, collect” (QL/41; GL/49). This early root was confused with ᴱ√OSO “through loss of ·h· in cpds”, another unglossed root but probably meaning something like “*enclosure” (QL/41, 71).
The verb form ᴱQ. hosta- “gather” appeared in the Early Qenya Grammar of the 1920s (PE14/33-34), and the root ᴹ√KHOTH “gather” appeared in The Etymologies of the 1930s with derivatives similar to its earlier iteration: ᴹQ. hosto “crowd, assembly”, N. hoth “host, crowd” and ᴹQ. hosta- “to collect” (Ety/KHOTH). The root √KHOT “gather, together in confusion, jumble” appeared in etymological notes from the late 1950s or early 1960s where it was the basis for S. hoth “host” and Q. hosta- “gather hastily together, pile up” (PE17/39). The Quenya verb reappeared with the gloss “gather” in the Markirya poem from the late 1960s (MC/222), indicating the continued validity of the root. The various derivatives of the root could be from either √KHOT or √KHOTH, so the actual primitive form is mostly academic.
References ✧ PE17/39, 157
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ᴹ√KHOTH root. “gather”
References ✧ Ety/GLAM, KHOTH
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ᴱ√HOSO root. “*gather”
References ✧ LT2A/Glamhoth; QL/41, 71
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