Elthir
Grey Havens
Jan 23 2017, 2:09pm
Views: 1825
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Short answer: Tolkien does not describe Elven ears in anything he published.
In a linguistic entry (LAS-2), written in the mid 1930s or early 1940s, it's said that the Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than human ears [text Etymologies]...
... but then in the late 1950s, early 1960s [text Words, Phrases and Passages] Tolkien revises his thoughts on LAS-words [which now includes SLAS- words] and does not make the same or similar description about Quendian ears that he had made earlier.
In other words, while Elvish-words for "ear, or listen" [lasto "listen"] and "leaves" ["lassi "leaves"] were set in publication in The Lord of the Rings, there is no longer an explanation [again, as stated explicitly back when JRRT wrote the LAS2- entry in Etymologies] that these words were connected due to the shape of Elven ears.
So in my opinion, no one knows for sure... even if we include posthumously published papers here.
Well... it's kind of a "shortish" answer 
(This post was edited by Elthir on Jan 23 2017, 2:15pm)
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