Out of The Silent Planet - Glossary

Glossary

• Arbol — the Sun (Field of Arbol - Solar System)
• crah — final section of a poem
• eldil — spirit, angel
• Glundandra — Jupiter
• handra — earth, land, planet
• harandra — high earth, plateau
• handramit — low earth, valley
• hlab — language
• hluntheline — long for, yearn for, desire (for the future)
• hnakra, pl. hnéraki — a vicious aquatic beast hunted by the hrossa. Its qualities could be those of a shark and a crocodile. Lewis may have borrowed the word from Germanic nicor, Old English niker(en), meaning "sea monster".
• hnakrapunt, pl. hnakrapunti — hnakra-slayer
• hnau — rational creature
• honodraskrud — ground-weed (honodra perhaps being an alteration of handra, + skrud "weed")
• hressni — female hrossa
• hru — blood (hence arbol hru, gold)
• Malacandra — a compound noun, formed with the prefix Malac and the noun handra, which latter means earth, land, or planet, and referring to the fourth planet from the sun; in English: Mars
• Maleldil — Jesus, the second person of God with "the Old One" and "the Third One."
• Oyarsa, pl. Oyéresu — (Title) Ruler of a planet, a higher-order angel, perhaps an arch-angel.
• Perelandra — a compound noun, formed with the prefix Perel and the noun handra, which means earth, land, or planet, and referring to the second planet from the sun; in English: Venus
• Thulcandra — a compound noun, formed with the prefix Thulc, meaning "silent", and handra, meaning earth, land, or planet, referring to the third planet from the sun in English: "Silent Planet" or Earth
• wondelone — long for, yearn for, miss (from the past).

The hrossa's word for "to eat" contains consonants unreproducible by the human mouth. It is not clear how that word would be pronounced on Venus, where Ransom, in the sequel, finds humans speaking the same language spoken by the hrossa.