Dragon (Middle-earth)
| Attributes | |
|---|---|
| Founder | Morgoth |
| Home world | Middle-earth |
| Base of operations | Ered Mithrin, Withered Heath, Lonely Mountain |
| Races | Fire-drakes, cold-drakes |
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium features dragons closely based on those of European legend.
Besides dragon (derived from French), Tolkien variously used the terms drake (the original English term, from Old English draca, in turn from Latin draco and Greek δράκων) and worm (from Old English wyrm, "serpent", "dragon").
The dragons were bred by Morgoth during the First Age, when Glaurung, the first dragon, appears. Tolkien's dragons are capable of breeding on their own, and in later ages the Withered Heath is purportedly their spawning ground.
Tolkien designed his own taxonomic system for dragons, based on locomotion and fire-breathing.
In Tolkien's works, dragons are quadrupedal, like Komodo dragons or other lizards, and are either flightless (Glaurung) or are winged and capable of flight (Ancalagon and Smaug). Winged dragons are stated to have first appeared during the War of Wrath, the battle that ended the First Age.
Tolkien refers to dragons which breathe fire as "Fire-drakes", or "Urulóki" (singular "Urulokë") in Quenya. It is not entirely clear whether the term "Urulóki" referred only to the first dragons such as Glaurung that could breathe fire but were wingless, or to any dragon that could breathe fire, and thus include Smaug. In Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien mentions a "Cold-drake". It is commonly assumed, though not directly stated, that this term indicates a dragon which cannot breathe fire, rather than one who breathes ice or snow. Further, Tolkien calls a fire-breathing dragon in the non-Middle-earth story Farmer Giles of Ham a "hot" one.
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