Females dwarves do or do not have beards: discuss.
Although it’s not stated explicitly, I think the discussion of “Durin’s folk” in the Appendices makes it pretty clear that they do. It does raise the question, did Aulë make bearded females when he first made the Dwarves or had he not thought to make dwarf-women but Eru Iluvatar turned some of them into females when the gave them true life, so that the race could continue, and did not bother to change their appearance?
And in response to Dave’s post, we also have the nouns
fell, animal hide with the fur
fell, hill, mountain, high ground
fell, unrefined lead ore
fell, gall, bitterness
all of which apparently are unrelated to the words Dave mentions, or to each other. (Although according to the OED the orgin of the “lead ore” use is unknown, and might somehow be connected to one of the others.
I started thinking about a story of a man who fell off a fell, that he climbed because he wanted to fell a tree, but he tripped over the fell he was wearing…
And of course this all happened in autumn.