Orc
Orc
An orc /ɔːrk/[1] is a fictional humanoid monster akin to a goblin.
Orcs have been the great antagonists, or the cannon fodder, in many fantasy series for a long time. Orcs have even inspired some “Sci-Fi Versions” of them on the run.
Contents
- 1 Etymology
- 1.1 Old English
- 1.2 Modern English
- 2 Tolkien’s Orc
- 3 Dungeon’s and Dragons Orc
- 4 Warcraft’s Orc
- 5 Warhammer’s Orc
- 6 Notes
Etymology
Old English
The Latin: Orcus is glossed as “Orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol”[a] (“Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil”) in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossary, about which Thomas Wright wrote, “Orcus was the name for Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand the explanation of hel-deofol. Orc, in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs, means a spectre, or goblin.” The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal defines ork in the closely related Old Dutch language as a verslindend monster (“devouring monster”), and points at a possible origin in the Old Dutch nork “petulant, crabbed, evil person”.
Modern English
A monster called Orcus is mentioned in Edmund Spenser’s 1590 Faerie Queene. The Oxford English Dictionary records an Early Modern period orke, meaning “ogre”, in Samuel Holland’s 1656 fairy tale Don Zara, a pastiche of Spanish romances such as Don Quixote. It is presumed that ‘orke’/’ogre’ came into English via continental fairy-tales, especially from the 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault, who borrowed most of his stories and developed his “ogre” from the 16th-century Italian writers Giovanni Francesco Straparola (credited with introducing the literary form of the fairy tale) and Giambattista Basile, who wrote in the Naples dialect, stating that he was passing on oral folktales from his region. In the tales, Basile used huorco, huerco or uerco, the Neapolitan form of Italian orco, lit. “Ogre”, to describe a large, hairy, tusked, mannish beast who could speak, lived in a dark forest or garden and might capture and eat humans.