... Tolkien states that "the suffix -ath (originally a collective noun-suffix) was used as a group plural, embracing all things of the same name, or those associated in some special arrangement or organization. So elenath (as plural of êl, [irregular] pl. elin) meant 'the host of the stars' ...

Yet another ending is -hoth "folk, host, horde", ... The Silmarillion Appendix (entry hoth) states that this ending is "nearly always used in a bad sense" ... The one who first called the Snowmen of Forochel Lossoth (for *Loss-hoth, loss = "snow") evidently did not like them.

- Sindarin, the Noble Tongue