In the battle at Helms Deep, Aragon tells the elves to "prepare to fire" their arrows. And the orcs laying siege to Minas Tirith, when the the 6,000 Rohirrim ride toward the orcs, the head orc tells the archers to "fire at will."
And I thought "fire" is a weird term for shooting arrows. Mostly "fire" is reserved for things involving gun powder (or its modern equivalents).
Then I wondered what would be the proper term. So I googled it. And the command to get ready to shoot arrows should be "nock" or "draw" as in nock an arrow or draw the string back. And the command to shoot arrows would be "loose arrows" or "release arrows."
It's been a long time since I read The Lord of the Rings books so I don't know if this is a mistake Tolkien made or the filmmakers made. My opinion is it's probably not Tolkien. Besides, in the books, there weren't elves at Helms Deep.
I do think that the worst parts of the LOTR movies is when they strayed from Tolkien. That's why I suspect this was an error by the screenwriters: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson.
The one scene I can't stand is in The Two Towers when Legolas and Gimli are counting how many orcs they kill and Legolas, being one short, shoots the orc Gimli is sitting on, saying he was twitching. And Gimli says "That's because my axe was in his nervous system!" I really don't think in the society of Middle Earth, they knew anatomy that well. (That scene may only be in the extended editions.) The whole counting of how many orcs killed isn't in the books, I'm pretty sure. Here is that scene.
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