Q. quén (quen-) n. and pron. “person, individual, man or woman; one, somebody” (Category: Human Being)
A general word for “person”, any individual independent of their gender and species, since the term was “freely applied to other Incarnates, such as Men or Dwarves, when the Eldar became acquainted with them” (WJ/372). In unstressed form quen, it was sometimes used as a pronoun “one, somebody”, and was also used as the second element in compounds such as ilquen “everyone” and roquen “horseman” (WJ/363, 372).
Most likely the Elves had a bias towards themselves as the main category of persons, since they used the term Quendi “(lit.) Speakers” to refer the Elves as species, and quén seems to have originally have been a variant of that term, derived from the same root √KWEN “speak”. This word was primarily discussed in the Quendi and Eldar essay from 1959-60, which may be where the term was introduced, but it appears in other late notes as well (PE19/93).
References ✧ PE19/93; WJ/361, 372, 393, 407
Glosses
Variations
Related
Inflections
| queni | plural | ✧ WJ/361 | |
| queni | plural | “people, they” | ✧ WJ/372 |
| -quen | suffix | ✧ WJ/407 |
Element In
Cognates
Derivations
Phonetic Developments
| √KWEN > -kwē̆n | [kwēn] | ✧ PE19/93 |
| ✶kwēn > quēn | [kwēn] | ✧ WJ/361 |
| √KWENE > kwēn | [kwēn] | ✧ WJ/393 |