Discussion Dwarfs vs. Dwarves

Recently I noticed that any instance of dwarves listed in tags is changed to dwarfs. At first I thought it was a little weird because I have always written the plural as dwarves. So I did a little digging and found out I had actually been wrong this entire time. It seems that dwarves was popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien in his books but it has been in use for quite some time. According to Ngram the word dwarves is seeing steady rise over the years and may replace dwarfs as the popular term to use. Feel free to discuss what you think on the topic.

Edit: The vote for Dwarves has quite quickly over taken the vote for Dwarfs. Seems most people here prefer Dwarves.
Edit2: I realized that people may choose to use Dwarfs and Dwarves interchangeably without care so I add an option to the poll.

 

Plural and singular. They are the same. In all honesty I prefer Dwarves

 

dwarfs = of a single dwarf
dwarves = multiple of a dwarf

 

dwarfs = midget
dwarves = midgets

 

Well, in proper English "dwarves" is the correct term. Think Leafs/leaves and wolfs/wolves. So, it's reasonable to see a rise in "dwarves." Using the term "dwarfs" is purely stylistic and was popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien as you said before. All we need is a great writer to use dwarfs again for it to make a comeback. Are you up to the challenge?

 

Actually from what I read dwarfs was always used before J.R.R. Tolkien popularized dwarves. The plural of roof and safe are roofs and safes, so changing "f" to "v" is not always required.

 

Right, I misread things and got stuff mixed up in my brain juices.

 

Me too!

 

Wouldn't that be dwarf's?

 

let me point this out desu~
a groups of short people are called dwarfs desu~
a group of make believe short people are dwarves desu~
a single human is person desu~
a group of humans is people desu~
persons... IS NOT A FKING WORD desu

 

I need to go back to college to ask the Dean of Educ which is my english 2 prof(essays) to get a higher mark on my last essay about myths. She said its dwarves and not dwarfs.

Well to be honest there are words that change from f to ve.

 

i honestly always thought the difference was that dwarves was for the magical creature kind and dwarfs was for the little people kind. It's it easiest to think of it like that? To make the distinction?

 

I'm not entirely sure where that can from but chill man. I agree that "persons" is not a word.

 

I'd just go with dwarves since I'm used to elf becoming elves in plural

 

Well NU doesn't seem to agree because every instance of the tag "Dwarves" is changed to "Dwarfs" shortly after. Pretty much every instance of the term Dwarfs on NU is going to be talking about the mythical kind.

 

no to many people use persons... and IT FKING PISSES ME THE FK OFF! desu~

 

I don't know , should we use stupids Gender neutral pronouns?

 

But "persons" is a word. At least I've seen it used in many contracts and legal documentation. Definitely not the type of word you use in conversation though...

 

I guess you are technically correct the persons is the possessive for person but I've seen it used as the plural of person from poorly translated novels so often that I can understand where his anger is coming from.

 

American English spelling reform