Fact: I Thought I Knew Everything About Tolkien’s Dwarves — I Didn’t
A tiny thing that longtime fans will appreciate.
There’s a special place in my heart for Tolkien’s legendarium — from the books to the films to the vivid new stories of the TV series — has always felt like a place I could escape to. But beyond the magic of Middle-earth, I’ve always been fascinated by Tolkien himself.
He wasn’t just a fantasy author. He was a professor at Oxford, a veteran of WWI, and a master of languages, fluent in Latin, Old Norse, Finnish, and more. He even worked on the Oxford English Dictionary as a young man.
And here’s where a small but brilliant story comes in.
When writing The Hobbit, Tolkien used 'dwarves' instead of the dictionary-approved 'dwarfs'. Critics called it incorrect. But Tolkien refused to change it — even though he’d helped write that very dictionary.
In a 1937 letter, he admitted:
"It is just a piece of private bad grammar... but I shall have to go with it."
He broke the rule — knowingly — because 'dwarves' simply fit the world he was building.
It’s such a small detail, yet it shows the kind of mind behind Middle-earth. A man of deep knowledge, imagination, and quiet defiance — the kind of person who didn’t just write fantasy, but reshaped how we dream.
