√TŌ/OTO root. “back”
The earliest appearance of this root was ᴹ√TOTO- “repeat” from Demonstrative, Relative, and Correlative Stems (DCR) from the late 1940s (PE23/109). The root appeared as √TŌ/OTO in a discussion of prefixes for “back” from around 1959, where Tolkien specified its meaning as “back as an answer, or return by another agent to an action affecting him, as in answering, replying, avenging, requiting, repaying, rewarding”; Tolkien also considered the forms √UTU/TŪ (PE17/166). In this 1959 note Tolkien crossed √TŌ/OTO through and seems to have replaced it with √KHAN. Tolkien mentioned the root √OT in a discussion of numbers from the late 1960s, but only to specify that “there was no primitive base OT-” (VT47/16).
References ✧ PE17/166-167, 171, 187-189; VT47/16
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