Áre
árë (stem ári-[1]) means "day, sunlight[2], warmth (0especially of the sun)[1]" in Quenya.
Etymology
The archaic form was ázë[2], from possible PQ *âsi, root *AS
Examples
Cognates
Tengwa
Árë was the original name of Essë, the thirty-first letter of the Tengwar alphabet. The word árë was first pronounced "ázë", but over time the phonemes for "z" and "r" merged and the letter Árë became superfluous. Hence why Árë was renamed Essë.
Other versions
Tolkien gave the etymological root of the words for "day" as AR1[3] which means that those words had always the radical letter r from Primitive Quendian.
However in Appendix E he gives the ancient form of Áre as Áze which can't be reconciled with the older etymology since there is no sense in Primitive r becoming Archaic z and then re-evolving to Quenya r again.
According to our comprehension of the evolution of Quenya, the z sound evolved from Primitive d or Primitive s[4] as in SRIS > hriz "to snow".
This, combined with the Sindarin element as of Asfaloth (meaning "sunlit foam")[1] show that Tolkien altered the derivation, by changing theoretically the root AR to *AS.
