Hobbit

How to spell hobbit

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hobbit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hobbit mean?

1. nounIn Tolkien's fiction, one of a small humanlike people who live in burrows and value comfort and quiet.

Hobbit in a sentence

• The film cast a relatively unknown actor as the main hobbit.

• Each hobbit in the story prefers a warm meal to a grand adventure.

Where does hobbit come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word was invented by the English author J.R.R. Tolkien, first appearing in print in his 1937 novel that bears the name as its title. Tolkien famously claimed the word simply arrived in his head one day while he was marking examination papers, when he scribbled the sentence 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit' on a blank page. He later proposed, half in earnest, that it could be traced to a reconstructed Old English form hol-bytla, meaning roughly 'hole-builder' or 'hole-dweller', from hol 'hole' and bytla 'builder', which fits the creatures who live in comfortable burrows. Because it is a deliberate literary coinage rather than an inherited word, its true 'origin' is really the imagination of one writer, though it was knitted from genuine Anglo-Saxon-flavoured roots. The doubled b, mirroring everyday words like rabbit and habit, is what keeps the spelling stable and is the main thing to remember.

How the word is built

• hobbit (a single coined unit; Tolkien linked it playfully to Old English hol-bytla 'hole-builder', from hol 'hole'
• bytla 'builder')