Righteous Anger

Something I see a lot of on LJ (and in the real world, for that matter) is the circular equation "I am right therefore I am angry; I am angry therefore I am right." I blame the Old Testament prophets and recommend a strong dose of Hellenistic philosophy.

Hot as a glede

I thought this was another scanning error, but it wasn't. In his account of his taking of the Ring from Sauron, Isildur writes "It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede, and my hand was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it." Now by "hot as a glede" he obviously means something like "hot as a Balrog's arse," (as opposed to "hot as Lúthien Tinúviel") but what exactly is this glede? According to the OED, it's a Scottish and Northern English word for a kite (as in the bird), but I'd never thought of kites as particularly hot.

(Cross-posted to linguaphiles)

Update Thanks to helpful readers here and on linguaphiles, I now know that "glede" is an old word for a burning coal. If I hadn't jumped straight at the first OED entry I saw, I would have found that out in minutes, but then I wouldn't have had the chance to enrich the English language by coining the phrase "hot as a Balrog's arse."