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Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle
[INDENT]2.1 In the first citation, Tolkien is making a comment on Hobbit ears, not Elvish. His only reference there to Elves is extremely indirect -- not only is he referring to them as elves (with a lower case 'e') he even puts them in quotation marks, which means that he is using the word not in its usual sense. Given that he always capitalises the Elves of his world, and that he never refers to them in such a backhanded manner ("The 'elves' of Lorien. . .") I can only conclude that in this letter he is referring to the elves of popular imagination: those pixie like spirits of the wood which have NO relation to the Elves created by Tolkien. (In letter 151 to Hugh Brogan, Tolkien wrote that he came to regret calling his folk Elves since it allied them too closely with these trivial figures of English myth.)
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Perhaps he
means to be referring to elves in the "normal" sense, like pixie-elves. My response to that would be that much of the art work (at least nowadays) of elves has them having huge pointed ears which stick out a foot from their heads. Like this dude:
elf?. So perhaps in saying that his hobbits' ears were only slightly "elvish" Tolkien meant pointy, but not huge like the other elves.
...Just a thought...