Over has had the sense of “from one side to the other” since at least the Middle English period.
It’s contextual. If you’re “passed over” for a promotion, that clearly doesn’t mean your boss literally flew above you. If you say you “passed over the I-95” on your way to work, I think you’re pretty clearly saying that you took an overpass that went above the I-95. Parsing that as saying you decided not to take the I-95 seems like awkward phrasing to me, but it’s possible.
Without more context, in the passage @MrDibble cites, saying of the Balrogs that they were “passing over Hithlum” could be parsed as meaning they avoided Hithlum and chose to come to Lammoth instead. But that seems really strained. Surely the most straightforward reading is that they swiftly rose into the air, flew over Hithlum, and descended on Lammoth as a fiery storm.
You say “just” like that’s the only way you ever use it. So you’d never use it in senses like “the helicopter passed over the house” or “the seagull passed over the dunes”?
If you would use it that way, then we just differ in interpretation, because I’m aware of the “skipping” sense, but do not feel it fits the sense of motion inherent in the quoted passage.
“After doing some twelve miles, they halted. A short way back the road had bent a little northward and the stretch that they had passed over was now screened from sight. This proved disastrous. They rested for some minutes and then went on; but they had not taken many steps when suddenly in the stillness of the night they heard the sound that all along they had secretly dreaded: the noise of marching feet. It was still some way behind them, but looking back they could see the twinkle of torches coming round the bend less than a mile away, and they were moving fast: too fast for Frodo to escape by flight along the road ahead.”
Well, it says right there, they (or at least Frodo) were flying.
Elsewhere in the story, Gandalf advises the others to “Fly, you fools!”
My issues with that citation are with both passing over and arose. Passing over could just as easily have meant “walked across” as “flew across.”
Tolkien doesn’t seem to have used arose to indicate flight in other instances in the Silmarillion. Closest is
Every other use (in my admittedly quick scan) that applies to a person (not to, say, the sun or the wind) indicates a rousing or, in a few instances (such as your quote), coming up to the surface from a great depth. He wrote lots of people who arose, but when one of them flies, he usually just says that they flew.
Balrogs lurked still, awaiting ever the return of their Lord; and now swiftly they arose, and passing over Hithlum they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire.
Context matters. I suppose one could parse that passage as indicating that the Balrogs got up out of bed, chose not to go to Hithlum, or swiftly moved through Hithlum, and came to Lammoth and burned stuff, with torches or something. But the most straightforward reading of that passage seems to me to be that the Balrogs (being spirits that can do this sort of stuff) rose into the air, flew in the air over Hithlum, and descended on Lammoth in the form of a fiery storm.
But.
I think it’s useful to keep in mind that especially in the Silmarillion, Tolkien was very deliberately writing in a mythopoetic mode. The exact literal meanings are largely irrelevant to what he was writing. And bisociation is common in myth and poetry.
Are Balrogs immaterial spirits of fire and darkness or are they literally composed of the actual chemical process of combustion and the absence of light or do they have a physical form with literal wings and swords and whips?
Yes.
When they “arose”, did they wake from a slumber; coalesce from a discarnate existence to take on physical form; stand up; or take to the air? Yes.
When they “passed over Hithlum”, did they swiftly, physically, move across the the territory of Hithlum without pausing or interacting with anyone; take to the air and fly over Hithlum; bypass Hithlum; or choose not to go to Hithlum? Yes.
When they “came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire”, does that just mean a bunch of them came to Lammoth and burned a bunch of stuff or that they literally had the physical form of a fiery storm? Yes.
I would not use it that way. That sounds weird and stilted to me. I would say the helicopter flew over the house or the seagull traveled past the dunes. To me, the phrase “passed over” means “skipped”, “avoided”, “missed”.
I suppose you could use it poetically to mean literally flying over something. But that’s not the natural meaning of the phrase in my idiom.
Now I’m curious what it meant to professor Tolkien.
I was firmly in the Balrogs have wings camp but when I read “The Shadow Returns”***** I saw the Professor used the same descriptive phrase for the gather gloom as he did for the Balrog’s “Wings”. So it looks like the arguments it was just a literary phrase have a lot of merit.
* All 13 pages of it.
A new thread is probably best, as my full response was rather long. What I will briefly say it this: I am not going by what someone says. I’m simply referring to the standardized practice for centuries that the contracted form of “have” is spelled " 've," as in “could’ve,” “would’ve,” “should’ve,” etc. Spelling it as “of” is to this day seen as a mistake, not merely informal, and that is a meaningful distinction… For example, most people don’t argue that “your” is a perfectly valid contraction of “you are.”
But to fully discuss why the above is the case gets into how language evolves, and that is complicated. Discussions of descriptivism often oversimplify. And this thread is already complicated enough as it is in trying to discuss Tolkien.
If you’d just said this
you wouldn’t have needed to say everything else just to say this
By that logic, you should have just have just said “I’m creating a new thread” rather than responding to my post. You didn’t, because you felt the need to rebut what I said.
I did the same thing. You accused me of following some authoritative source, rather than having knowledge of the topic, so I pointed out otherwise.
Modnote: OK, lets move on. No need to go any further into this side bit.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
Note that my opinion that Balrogs can fly is orthogonal to my opinion on whether they have wings, and more to do with their nature as demonic supernatural fire creatures.
“Aah, but why did that one fall from the bridge?”, you ask.
Because they were locked in spiritual as well as physical struggle with Gandalf, I say.
Why would a winged Balrog use the bridge at all? Why not fly over Gandalf and slaughter his friends, then fly away? Why flee Gandalf by running up the Endless Stair? And having reached the peak, why not fly away? Why no other flying Maia?
I thought I covered this:
You mean, like the “spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles” that Manwë sent out? Initially, Tolkien included the Eagles as Maiar too, but changed his mind.
Spiritual-empowered flight isn’t an unknown in Tolkien. There flying Elwing came to him… and in her case, it was definitely not a metaphor.
Were the dragons Maiar?
If not how did Morgoth get them? I thought one of Morgoth’s main gripes was he did not have access to the Secret Fire and could not make living things of his own (the orcs were corrupted elves).
Bred them, as far as I’m aware. So started from living stock.
“When a warg and a fellbeast love each other very much…”