's 1872
The Princess and the Goblin. The "orc-" element occurs in
The Hobbit in the sword name
Orcrist, and
glossed as "Goblin-cleaver".
Stated etymology Tolkien began the more modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of
evil humanoid beings. His earliest
Elvish dictionaries include the entry
Ork (orq-) "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with
orqindi and "ogresse". He sometimes used the plural form
orqui in his early texts. He stated that the Elvish words for orc were derived from a root
ruku, "fear, horror"; in
Quenya,
orco, plural
orkor; in
Sindarin orch, plurals
yrch and
Orchoth (as a class). He explained that his word "orc" was "derived from Old English
orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability", and Tolkien also observed a similarity with the
Latin word
orcus, noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya]
urko, S[indarin]
orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word
orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connection between them".
Description Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size. They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight. the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful. Later, they were garrisoned also in Isengard serving
Saruman, whose Uruks were no longer afraid of daylight. Half-orcs appear in
The Lord of the Rings, created by interbreeding of orcs and Men; similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in
The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed." In
Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings films, the actors playing orcs are made up with masks designed to make them look evil. After a disagreement with the film producer
Harvey Weinstein, Jackson had one of the masks made to resemble Weinstein, as an insult to him.
Orkish language The Orcs had no language of their own, merely a pidgin of many various languages. However, individual tribes developed dialects that differed so widely that
Westron, often with a crude accent, was used as a common language. However, in a note published in
Vinyar Tengwar he gives an alternative translation: "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!" speculated that Tolkien might have drawn upon the language of the ancient
Hittites and
Hurrians for Black Speech.
In-fiction origins The origins of orcs were explained in multiple inconsistent ways by Tolkien. Early works depict them as creations of
Morgoth, mimicking the forms of the Children of Ilúvatar. or, perhaps the
Avari, the Elves who refused to go to
Aman, turned "evil and savage in the wild". The orcs "multiplied" like Elves and Men, meaning that they
reproduced sexually. In
The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth". Or, they were "
beasts of humanized shape": possibly Elves mated with beasts, and later Men. Elsewhere, Tolkien wrote that they could have been fallen
Maiar – perhaps a kind called
Boldog, like lesser
Balrogs – or corrupted Men. Shippey writes that the orcs in
The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with a continual supply of enemies who one could kill without compunction, or in Tolkien's words from
The Monsters and the Critics to serve as "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered. In a 1954 letter, Tolkien wrote that orcs were "fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today". The scholar of English literature
Robert Tally wrote in
Mythlore that despite the uniform presentation of orcs as "loathsome, ugly, cruel, feared, and especially terminable", Tolkien could not resist "the urge to flesh out and 'humanize' these inhuman creatures from time to time", in the process giving them their own morality. Shippey notes that in
The Two Towers, the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick" (an immoral act) of abandoning a comrade, as he wrongly supposes
Sam Gamgee has done to
Frodo Baggins. Shippey describes the implied concept of evil as
Boethian – that evil is the absence of good. He notes, however, that Tolkien did not agree with that concept of evil; Tolkien believed that evil had to be actively fought, with war if necessary. That is something that Shippey describes as representing the
Manichean position – that evil coexists with good, and is at least equally as powerful.
Orcs and race Writers including Andrew O'Hehir and the literary critic Jenny Turner have likened Tolkien's descriptions of orcs to racial stereotypes. Writing for
Salon.com, the journalist Andrew O'Hehir describes Tolkien's orcs as "a subhuman race [...] that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death". He adds that they are "dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions, a sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil." Tally says the orcs are a
demonized enemy, despite Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars. In a letter to his son,
Christopher, who was serving in the
RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict: 's film versions of Tolkien's orcs have been compared to wartime caricatures of the Japanese (here, an American
propaganda poster). In
The Two Towers, the
Ent Treebeard says: The journalist David Ibata writes that the interpretations of orcs in
Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings films look much like "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during
World War II". The Germanic studies scholar
Sandra Ballif Straubhaar writes that there is evidence in Tolkien's writing of "a kind of racism perhaps not unremarkable in a mid-twentieth century Western man", but that this is often overstated, and must be balanced against the "polycultured, polylingual world" that is "absolutely central" to Middle-earth, as well as Tolkien's own "appalled objection" to those seeking to use his work to uphold racist ideas. == Other fiction ==