YOD “enclosed” was blended with YON “wide, extensive” and doesn’t feel right to me for “cell”

eldamo.org - Eldamo : Primitive Elvish : YON²

You could go with mandosan “prison room”

Perhaps PEL then

What sense of “cell” are you trying to translate? Do you mean “cell” as in a single cellular organism?

+Paul Strack well, all of them:) as the 1000-words list does not specify which sense of the word qualifies it to be in the top 1000 (although I suspect it is the biological one).
But in English all senses of the word are related to 'enclosed space, compartment', which makes sense, so that's what I was trying to figure out first.

+Tamas Ferencz I suspect “prison cell” is the most common English usage, or “biological cell”. The sense “compartment” is not at all that common for “cell”. I’d use different Quenya words for all three, probably.

I think mandosan works for “prison cell”.

The sense “compartment” is related to “part”, so I’d do something with SAT as the root. Maybe combining your idea and mine with both PEL and SAT “around part”. Perhaps pelsat or pelestat.

I suppose this could also work for “biological cell”

+Paul Strack I agree that *mandosan (mandosamb-) is fitting for “prison cell”.

I like the confluence of “bound, limit, encircle, enclose” with “part (set aside, separate), compartmentalize, portion; place” for “compartment, cell”.

By analogy with fractions, we could perhaps use *pelesta < pele-stā as a longer form and *pelsat as a shorter one. Is *pelestat < pel-estat < pel-et-sat “enclosed division”?

PEL sometimes has a passive meaning “encircled” (S pêl and pn. derivatives; MQ peler, opele, Pelmar) and sometimes active “encircling” (S ephel; LQ peler, pelo, pelma, Pelóri); we can perhaps infer that the underlying root can bear either meaning without prejudice to utilize as many attested words/meanings as possible. Thus, one could interpret constructs such as *pelsat, *pelesta as either “encircling part” (= “border region, march, ~boundary”) or “encircled part” (= the compartment/cell itself).

As we have more, later attested Q words for the active meaning, the passive may be more useful. If we desire explicit clarity for persons unfamiliar with our discussions, we could use *peldasta < pel-nā-stā or *pelinasta < pel-inā-stā (cf. túrinasta) “encircled part” or even *pelsinasta < peles-inā-stā “fenced-round part”. The first sounds slightly cacaphonic to my lámatyáve due to the proximate d, t and the last looks too long, as if it were from pel-sin(a)-(a)sta, so *pelinasta seems best if we choose an explicit route.

+Robert Reynolds pelinasta “compartment, (lit.) encircled part” sounds good to me, better than either of my suggestions. Or perhaps yondasta if we were to use +Tamas Ferencz’s original suggestion of YOD

+Paul Strack *yondasta works, too.

I'll add both pelinasta and yondasta to the +#1000words list