aistana, past participle blessed, indicating a verbal stem #aista- bless. The ending -na forming past participles is well attested. Compare for instance the verb car- (kar-) make quoted in the Etymologies (LR:362 s.v. kar-, there in the first person aorist: karin) with its past participle #carna made, attested as part of a compound in MR:408. This ending descends from primitive -nâ: compare such a primitive "past participle" as skalnâ (> Quenya halda) hidden vs. the stem skal1- hide, LR:386. However, in Quenya the past participle ending also appears in a longer form -ina. Examples like hastaina marred (MR:254) would seem to suggest that this longer form would be used in the case of a verb in -ta. Perhaps the past participle of #aista- bless appears as aistana rather than **aistaina because of euphony, the diphthong ai in two concomitant syllables being disliked. – The verb #aista- bless is not previously attested. It is obviously not to be equated with aista to dread in the Etymologies (LR:358 s.v. gáyas- fear), though in both cases we are probably to assume a primitive form *gaistâ-. The verb aista- would then include the same stem as in (*gaisi >) aire holy discussed above, though subsequent sound-changes have made the words somewhat divergent in form: intervocalic s is voiced to z and then becomes r in Noldorin Quenya, but in front of an unvoiced plosive like t, an s remains unchanged (with *gaistâ- > Q aista- but *gaisi > Q aire compare primitive bestâ matrimony > Q
vesta but primitive besû married pair > Q veru, LR:352 s.v. bes-, the latter form arising via *vezu). As indicated in the discussion of aire above, the original meaning of the relevant stem has to do with fear and dread rather than holiness: what is "holy" is in origin perceived as that which is fearful or awe-inspiring. It may be that in a way, the verb aista to dread in the Etymologies is indeed the same as its homonym bless in the text before us: Tolkien simply reinterpreted the semantic development (or rather re-coined an earlier word from much the same elements as before, but then applied them with somewhat different shades of meaning). In aista- to dread, clearly meant to come from *gaistâ-, the verbal ending -tâ > -ta adds little to the meaning of the stem gáyas- fear (if we take this gloss as a verb rather than a noun). Compare a Quenya verb like onta- beget, derived from a stem ono- of exactly the same meaning (LR:379; see ontaril). Yet this ending often has a stronger meaning than simply signaling that "this is a verb". It can be causative (see under tulya regarding primitive tultâ-), but also declarative: Interestingly, this meaning is apparently prominent in another attested word for bless, namely laita (the cry a laita, laita te in the Cormallen Praise and SD:47 meaning bless them, bless them, Letters:308). The verb laita- would most likely be derived from a stem that must be either lay- or day- (since initial primitive d- normally becomes l- in Quenya). We know a base lay- that underlies words for green or summer (Letters:283, cf. QL:52 s.v. laya), but this seems a less than ideal candidate as the stem for a verb bless; on the other hand, it seems clear that Tolkien in the post-Etymologies period reckoned with a stem *day- having to do with greatness (of course unconnected with day- shadow in LR:354): Sindarin daer means great (as in Lond Daer Great Harbour, PM:329, and Athrad Daer/Dhaer Great Ford, WJ:335/338), and this adjective is probably meant to represent primitive *dairâ (with the same adjectival ending as in such primitive forms as gairâ, ubrâ, gaisrâ: see under aire above). Likely, Quenya laita- bless is to be referred to a primitive word *daitâ-, sc. the same stem *day- great with the verbal ending -tâ, that would here be declarative: *Daitâ- would mean magnify, that can of course mean to literally make big or great, but also praise by declaring great: When Frodo and Sam were hailed with the cry laita te, bless them, the onlookers would literally be encouraging one another to magnify them in the sense of declaring their greatness. In the case of the word #aista- in the text before us, that may also be translated bless, this semantic idea is however derived from another source – but the ending seems to have the same shade of meaning. In the case of *gaistâ-, Tolkien evidently imagined that the ending -tâ is again declarative, and since the stem gay(a)- or gáyas- has to do with fear and dread, the basic meaning would be to declare or recognize the fearfulness (awe-inspiring quality > holiness) of another: Aistana elye blessed (= recognized and declared as holy) art thou. Contrast the earlier interpretation of *gaistâ in the Etymologies, where the same suffix -tâ was simply used as a verb-former with little independent meaning and the descendant Quenya verb aista to dread differed only slightly in meaning from the stem gáyas- fear itself.