Quote:
Now it's my turn to sound dumb... What is NICOTIANA?
Nicotiana is listed in the index of
RotK as a thing found on page 9 of ? in my movie covered paperback edition. A little investigation led me to page 9 of
FotR where the word is used as the scientific word for the tobacco of Middle-earth in Part 2 of the Prologue, 'Concerning Pipe-weed'.
Next I looked it up in my Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary and found it to be "a genus of chiefly American plants of the nightshade family, of which several species produce tobacco." So the Professor didn't invent a new word, but merely relied on the real-world one being mysterious enough.
May I have an "M" please.
[Edited on 3/3/2003 by Grondmaster]