I really just wanted to share the weirdness of the spelling variants of the word dwarf. I had absolutely no idea that Tolkien had affected the spelling like this - the Merriam-Webster allows for the plural dwarves, whereas after the mid-19thC, most people spelled the word with an f, as in dwarfs (an evolutionary change to the spelling). They now allow for this variation in their record because Tolkien spelled the word with a v (the older spelling) when referring to the race of dwarves in his literature. Go figure. If you asked me five minutes ago to spell the plural of dwarf, I would have spelled it with a v. I wouldn't have said that spelling it with the f is incorrect, but if prompted to spell, I would have written it as dwarves. That's a powerful thing.
I just wanted to point out that once again, Tolkien proves that even though he may have spent his spare time inventing languages and writing out complex histories of worlds which don't exist, he was so awesome at it that he actually affected the way that we spell the plural of dwarf. And that's a pretty big deal.
I would also like to make a final note that my browser is attempting to correct my spelling of dwarves, but it can't even offer a suggestion for it. TB, Google Chrome.
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