I wonder which culture originated the notion of orcs.
The OED traces the word back to "orca" - the killer whale - somewhat to my surprise. There are citations given for the sense of "ogre" as far back as 1598, but they seem pretty sporadic and ill-defined; I'm pretty sure that the modern sense of orcs as a coherant race, was actually invented by Tolkein.
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syntheid
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Date: 2005-01-23 04:53 am (UTC)The OED traces the word back to "orca" - the killer whale - somewhat to my surprise. There are citations given for the sense of "ogre" as far back as 1598, but they seem pretty sporadic and ill-defined; I'm pretty sure that the modern sense of orcs as a coherant race, was actually invented by Tolkein.