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mathom

noun /ˈmæðəm/

  1. A trinket or piece of bric-a-brac; a knick-knack, often used in regifting.

    When the door of the mathom shop is closed and the Inhabitant leaves the print of his footsteps for a moment on the wooden stair, things pause. There is no movement, not even of time. The mathoms listen until, downstairs, carpets and rugs swallow the noises of living, [...]

Where it comes from

Learned borrowing from Old English māþum (“treasure, object of value, jewel, ornament, gift”), from Proto-Germanic *maiþmaz (“present, gift”); introduced by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with the conceit that it was a translation of his invented language Adûni's kast, a word used by Hobbits as a generic name for items which they were unwilling to throw away, but for which they had no use.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry mathom (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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