Dwarves

How to spell dwarves

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dwarves

What does dwarves mean?

1. nounPlural of dwarf: small, stocky humanoid creatures of folklore and fantasy, often shown as skilled miners and smiths.

Dwarves in a sentence

• The novel follows a band of bearded dwarves who mine deep beneath the mountains.

• In the tabletop game, dwarves gain bonuses when fighting underground.

Where does dwarves come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of dwarf, which descends from the Old English dweorg, meaning a very small person or, in early folklore, a tiny supernatural being thought to cause illness or mischief. The word is solidly Germanic, with close relatives in Old Norse dvergr, Old High German twerg, and modern German Zwerg, all naming small magical creatures of myth. For centuries the standard written plural was 'dwarfs', formed in the ordinary way, and that form is still used for people of short stature and in astronomy (white dwarfs). The spelling 'dwarves' was popularised in the twentieth century by J. R. R. Tolkien, a professional philologist who deliberately chose the older-feeling f-to-v pattern (matching leaf/leaves and wolf/wolves) for the mining folk of his stories. That literary choice is exactly the spelling trap: 'dwarves' now reads as natural for fantasy beings even though the regular plural 'dwarfs' was the historical norm.

How the word is built

• dwarf (from Old English dweorg: a small mythical being)
• -ves (plural, with the f-to-v change as in leaf/leaves)