Hot as a glede

[robinturner]

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."

Comments

[vret.livejournal.com]

Also a hot coal, apparently, although that quote is the only reference
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glede

[vret.livejournal.com]

Ah, Chaucer used it, too
http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/glede

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

My Italian version translates this phrase as caldo come ferro rovente, which back-translates as "hot as glowing iron". This is clearly not quite right; mind you, although it is generally a good translation, I've spotted a few other mistakes and infelicities.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

but then I wouldn't have had the chance to enrich the English language by coining the phrase "hot as a Balrog's arse."

And, as a result, spinning off some speculation in lotrfic_crit.