Nazgul-Were they still Men?

[burrahobbit]

The wraiths are magic men. You can do a lot of things to change the appearance of men, but you can't change the fundamental essence of their souls. A Man is a Man until God says otherwise. You can nip and tuck all you like, and everybody may treat the subject like something else by the end (which might be a good thing), but it is still fundamentally a Man.

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

...albeit their spirits were bound to the Nine, and the One, hence, despite the slow vanishing of their bodies (the house of their spirits), they can't leave Arda.

The "wraith" was probably just a shorthand name for a houseless spirit wandering in Arda.

[burrahobbit]

No. Spirits can't interact with the world unless they have a body. Least not one so impotent as a man's.

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

Yes, they can't. That's why I said "houseless." They needed the cloaks to give them shape, and probably gauntlets to grasp their swords.

[burrahobbit]

Gauntlets and cloaks are a part of the world btw. They still have sinews, they are housed.

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

They are not disembodied spirits, as I first thought...

And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows.

(The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age - emphasis mine)

They are Men, no longer living but not quite dead, trapped in a limbo-state called the realm of shadows - or wraith world. Unless there is a geographical realm of shadows.

[burrahobbit]

I reckon that's what I said, yes.