By comparison, Bárdarbunga dwarves the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which shutdown most of Europe's airspace last year after its ash cloud drifted across the continent's skies.
A few years ago ("Dwarfs vs. dwarves", 1/3/2004), a small amount of research convinced me that the plural noun "dwarves" is mainly used for members of the fantasy race, partly but not exclusively due to the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien, with "dwarfs" being the standard plural form (it's the only one that the OED gives), and therefore the one used in standard English for real-world referents, whether human or astronomical.
It never even occurred to me that anyone would use "dwarves" as the third singular form of the verb dwarf "To cause to be or seem small". So much for confident assumptions.
To my further surprise, a search on The Telegraph's web site yields plenty of other examples of the same choice. Thus Julie Williams, "Funding for dementia research is dangerously low", 2/9/2011:
There has rarely been such a gulf between potential and the means to deliver as there is in UK dementia research today. We have made strides forward in the face of underinvestment, but the reality is that we continue to let down the 820,000 people in the UK today with dementia. With concern at an all time high, an economic burden that dwarves other diseases, and numbers with dementia spiralling towards a million, there really isn’t an argument against action now. Investment today will avert a crippling social and economic burden tomorrow.
Simon Heffer, "It is the shameless MPs, not bankers, who should grovel", 1/24/2011:
In a week when yet another MP has admitted to being a criminal – and this is becoming a cultural problem – it is they, not bankers, who need to show some remorse. The public must regain confidence in the political class: but it won't happen while so many of its members behave like intellectual dwarves and moral lepers.
At this point, I thought to myelf that maybe The Telegraph has decided, as a matter of obedience to Simon Heffer's whim, to render both the nominal and verbal inflections of dwarf as "dwarves". And maybe this is correct — while a search for "dwarfs" on The Telegraph's web site" yields more than 2,000 hits, this seems to be because their search engine strips the final 's' and yields lots of articles containing "dwarf" and "dwarfed". After checking a dozen or so, I couldn't find any true instances of "dwarfs" — perhaps some reader will be more ingenious or more persistent.
But there are more surprises to come. In pursuit of the idea that this is an Telegraphic eccentricity, I took a look in the Guardian. And to my surprise, the very first hit for "dwarves" is a verbal one — Michael Aylwin, "Six Nations 2011: Victory over France could send Scotland on their way", 2/4/2011:
So Scotland will not be believing the hype too much. Still, they have picked a pack that dwarves that of their hosts. It outweighs them, too. According to the official statistics, which, in the case of France, should not be taken as gospel (Jérôme Thion, the reserve lock, is 13st, apparently), the Scotland pack weighs in at 142st to France's 133st 6lb – more than a stone a man heavier.
As far as I can tell, however, this remains a UK phenomenon — at least a search of the NYT index shows the expected limitation of "dwarves" to the realm of plural fantasy nouns, with plurals in the real world and third-singular verbs reliably using "dwarfs".
That's all the research that I have time for. But maybe one of our readers can enlighten us. Is it really true that "dwarves" is taking over England? If so, how and why?
[For those not already excessively familiar with it, here's J.R.R. Tolkien's account of why he decided to use "dwarves" in his fantasy novels, from Appendix F of LOTR:
It may be observed that in this book as in The Hobbit the form dwarves is used, although the dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is dwarfs. It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese. But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a man, or even of a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among Men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk-tales, where at least a shadow of truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense-stories in which they have become mere figures of fun. But in the Third Age something of their old character and power is still glimpsed, if already a little dimmed: these are the descendants of the Naugrim of the Elder Days, in whose hearts still burns the ancient fire of Aule the Smith, and the embers smoulder of their long grudge against the Elves; in in whose hands still lives the skill in works of stone that none have surpassed.
It is to mark this that I have ventured to use the form dwarves, and so remove them a little, perhaps, from the sillier tales of these latter days. Dwarrows would have been better; but I have used that form only in the name Dwarrowdelf, to represent the name of Moria in the Common Speech: Phurunargian. For that meant 'Dwarf-delving', and yet was already a word of antique form. But Moria is an Elvish name, and given without love…
Is there any reason to think that British journalists have been more influenced by Tolkien than American ones have?]
Source: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2959
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