In Aldmeris, and it's derivatives, Mora means forest, and it's [censored] everywhere. Balmora "stone forest", Sadrith Mora "mushroom forest", Morag Tong "Foresters Guild", Hermaeus Mora "Old Man of the Forest", Atmora "elder forest", Dremora "..." (okay, I don't think that one really counts).

Thus I propose that the semantic content of the term in Merrish minds and on Merrish tongues has much more breadth and depth than does the conventional Mannish one familiar to all of us.

I don't really know if I can answer that beyond "yeah, probably", but I think "Dremora" does count. They call themselves "Kyn", so "Dremora" is almost definitely a Merrish term.

Something about the Dawn-time reminds me of a forest, at least in the our own mythical sense of a forest is.

Atmora? A forest? Bah, hardly.

This kalpa is almost assured its permanence by Talos, but it ain't out of the woods yet.

A really cold forest?

A glacial forest, where melted water flees up. The water strives to reach the light of magnus and the warmth to remain liquid, only to be refrozen by the bitter death winds, forming a tree of ice. A testament to the liquid endeavor to escape the tyranny of glacial solidity.

The mythic elven homeland (Which i can;t remember the name of right now) is said to be so urbanised no nature exists there anymore. As such, comming to Tamriel, with its many forests, was probably something of a shock to the Elves. You also have to consider that, in a situation where a language develops without something (say, trees) the translations of concepts can become increasingly complex when applying them to something that didn't exist before. Mora could have been used as a stop-gap qualifier word to explain alien concepts in a recogniseable way, and just kind of stuck. Thats why you have it used in conjunction with so many different things, which in turn create subtly different meanings.

As for the Dremora, that is almost certianly Daedric, not Aldmeris, and as such while sounding similar probably has a radically different meaning.

That was one of the fun things I did on my second Morrowind cycle; trying to decode the names of the towns.

Dre-Mora HA! I love that for some reason. I picture Dr. Dre wearing Daedric armor.

Hermaeus Mora and the translation of his name always reminded me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shub-Niggurath, especially the moniker, "Old Man of the Forrest" with Shub's "Black Goat of the Woods"

What would 'treasure forest' be?

I think a Dev hinted that would be important in the boethia summoning day thread...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg&ob=av3e Seeing that Ehlnofex is built entirely on word relationships and metaphor, a really loose interpretation of forest makes sense to me.

AFAIK, languages evolve mostly through slang, and loan-words. Elves live longer, keeping old slang in place (preventing the development of new slang), and are xenophobic. Thus, their vocabulary is very small, and each word must have a broader meaning.

Atmora = Aldmora = "Ye olde foreste"

So confusing, I can't take any mora this.

Or there are constant Earthquakes opening new geysers all over and when they shoot up, they quickly freeze.

Unlikely, unless all of Atmora is a single gigantic volcanically active region.

Wasn't Atmora warmer in the past (relatively speaking)?

I like that explanation

Mora could just simply be an allusion to the affinity Elves in fantasy have with nature, namely temperate forests. Strangely, the Mer (sans Telvanni Dumer and Bosmer) seem to have no better bonds with the natural world than men.

You have never heard of Green Pact or Beast Tongue power?

I wonder what Dremora means...

"forest demon"?

Wasn't the pre-OB deadlands (MD's demesne) described as a vast, cold, leafless forest? That would do a pretty swell job of explaining the -mora part of Dremora.

I don't remember any descriptions of any realm (Battlespire aside) of Oblivion prior to... Oblivion.

I was thinking about that. Excepting the cold part, I think "lifeless forest" could have been a poetic embellishment of "fiery pit of hell" on the part of the Sunbirds or whoever the Altmer send to survey the Principalities.

Anyway, for now, let us conjecture that Dremora means "Lifeless Forest [Men]".