Orc

An Orc (or Ork) /ɔːrk/[1] is a fictional humanoid monster like a goblin. Orcs were brought into modern usage by the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's works, Orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters, contrasting with the benevolent Elves and serving an evil power, though they share a human sense of morality. There is a suggestion, among several somewhat contradictory origin stories, that they are a corrupted race of elves.[2]

An orc from Warhammer Fantasy

Mythological monsters with names similar to "orc" can be found in the Old English poem Beowulf, in Early Modern poetry, and in Northern European folk tales and fairy tales. Tolkien stated that he took the name from Beowulf.[T 1] The orc appears on lists of imaginary creatures in two of Charles Kingsley's mid-1860s novels.

Tolkien's concept of orcs has been adapted into the fantasy fiction of other authors, and into games of many different genres such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Warcraft.

Etymology

Old English
Latin Orcus is glossed as Old English "Orc, þyrs ꝉ hel-deofol" ("Goblin, spectre or hell-devil") in the 10th century Cleopatra Glossaries.

The Latin word Orcus is glossed as "Orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol"[lower-alpha 1] ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossaries, 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."[3][4][lower-alpha 2] The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal defines ork in the closely related Old Dutch language as a verslindend monster ("devouring monster"),[5] and points at a possible origin in the Old Dutch nork "petulant, crabbed, evil person".[6]

The term is used just once in Beowulf as the plural compound orcneas, one of the tribes alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God:

þanon untydras ealle onwocon
eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas
swylce gigantas þa wið gode wunnon
lange þrage he him ðæs lean forgeald
—Beowulf, Fitt I, vv. 111–14[7]
Thence all evil broods were born,
ogres and elves and evil spirits
—the giants also, who long time fought with God,
for which he gave them their reward
—John R. Clark Hall, tr. (1901)[8]
Beowulf's eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, "ogres and elves and devil-corpses", inspiring Tolkien to create orcs and other races

Orcneas is translated "evil spirits" above, but its meaning is uncertain. Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", to which the translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice.[9][lower-alpha 3] It is generally supposed to contain an element -né, cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár, both meaning 'corpse'.[10] The usual Old English word for corpse is líc, but -né appears in nebbed 'corpse bed',[11] and in dryhtné 'dead body of a warrior', where dryht is a military unit. If *orcné is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', the meaning may be "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)", or "devil-corpse", understood as some sort of walking dead monster.[9]

Early Modern

A monster called Orcus is mentioned in Edmund Spenser's 1590 Faerie Queene.[12] The Oxford English Dictionary records an Early Modern period orke, meaning "ogre", in Samuel Holland's 1656 fairy tale Don Zara del Fogo, a pastiche of Spanish romances such as Don Quixote.[lower-alpha 4][13] 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 which could speak, lived in a dark forest or garden and might capture and eat humans.[lower-alpha 5]

19th century

It is possible that Tolkien was influenced by more recent sources. "Orc" appears as one of a list of imaginary creatures in Charles Kingsley's 1863 The Water-Babies[14] and his 1865 Hereward the Wake.[15] Tolkien probably read the latter as he uses rare terms like "horse-boy" which are found in that book.[16]

Tolkien
Tolkien wrote that his orcs were influenced by the goblins in George MacDonald's 1872 The Princess and the Goblin.[T 1] Illustration "The goblins fell back a little when he began, and made horrible grimaces" by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920

Stated etymology

Tolkien began the modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of evil, humanoid creatures. 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.[lower-alpha 6] 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).[T 2][T 1] They had similar names in other Middle-earth languages: uruk in Black Speech (restricted to the larger soldier-orcs);[T 1] in the language of the Drúedain gorgûn, "ork-folk"; in Khuzdul rukhs, plural rakhâs; and in the language of Rohan and in the Common Speech, orka.[T 2]

Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his Orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.[T 1] He explained that his "orc" was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability",[T 1] and

I originally took the word from Old English orc (Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc: þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')).[lower-alpha 7] This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc, ork, a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order".[T 3]

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."[T 2]

Description

Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size;[T 4] in The Hobbit they are called "goblins", though Thorin's Elvish sword from Gondolin is named as "Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter".[T 5] 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.[T 6]

By the third age, a new breed of Orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight.[T 6] Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men, and may indulge in cannibalism: in The Two Towers, Grishnákh, an Orc from Mordor, claims that the Isengard Orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an Orc flings Pippin stale bread and a "strip of raw dried flesh... the flesh of he dared not guess what creature".[T 6]

The orcs from Mordor speak the Black Speech, a language invented for them by Sauron, while those from Isengard speak other tongues; to understand each other, they use the Common Speech (Westron), such as Pippin overheard and understood.[T 6][17]

Half-orcs appear in The Lord of the Rings, created by interbreeding of Orcs and Men;[T 7] they were able to go in sunlight.[T 6] The "sly Southerner" in The Fellowship of the Ring looks "more than half like a goblin";[T 8] similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed."[T 9]

In-fiction origins: a moral dilemma

Orcs presented Tolkien with a moral dilemma. He attempted to resolve this by proposing several semi-contradictory theories for their origins. In The Tale of Tinúviel, Orcs originate as "foul broodlings of Melkor who fared abroad doing his evil work".[T 10] In The Silmarillion, Orcs are East Elves (Avari) enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth (as Melkor became known);[T 11] they "multiplied" like Elves and Men. Tolkien stated in a 1962 letter to a Mrs. Munsby that Orc-females must have existed.[18] In The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth".[T 12] Or, they were "beasts of humanized shape", possibly, Tolkien wrote, Elves mated with beasts, and later Men.[T 13] Or again, Tolkien noted, they could have been fallen Maiar, perhaps a kind called Boldog, like lesser Balrogs; or corrupted Men.[T 7]

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 over whom one need feel no compunction",[19] or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered.[19] Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality, though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. In his view, Tolkien, as a Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves.[2] 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."[T 14] Robert T. 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.[20] Shippey notes that in The Two Towers, the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick"–an immoral act–of seeming to abandon a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam has done with Frodo. Shippey describes the implied view of evil as Boethian, that evil is the absence of good. He notes however that Tolkien did not agree with that point of view; Tolkien believed that evil had to be actively combatted, with war if necessary, something that Shippey describes as representing the Manichean position, that evil coexists with good and may be equally powerful.[21]

The origins of orcs: the Catholic Tolkien's moral dilemma
Created evil Like animals Created good, but fallen
Origin of Orcs
according to Tolkien		 "Brooded" by Morgoth[T 10] "Beasts of humanized shape"[T 13] Fallen Maiar, or corrupted Men/Elves[T 11][T 7]
Moral implication Orcs are wholly evil (unlike Men) and can be slaughtered without compunction[19] Orcs have no morality, no power of speech, are not sentient Orcs have morality just like Men[21][20]
Resulting problem Orcs like Gorbag have a moral sense (even if they can't keep to it) and can speak, which conflicts with their being wholly evil or not even sentient. Since evil cannot make, only mock, Orcs can't have an equal and opposite morality to Men.[20][2] It's wrong just to slaughter them, then

Debated racism
Tolkien's moral geography of Middle-earth in the Third Age, according to John Magoun[22]

The possibility of racism in Tolkien's descriptions of orcs has been debated. In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as:[T 15]

squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."[T 15]

O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. 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."[23] He notes Tolkien's own description of them (quoted above), saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the "Other", and states "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite" and mentions Tolkien's letters to this effect.[23] The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in the London Review of Books, endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about".[24][23]

The scholar of English literature Robert Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy, despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars.[25] 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:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.[T 16]

John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, states that Middle-earth has a "fully expressed moral geography".[22] Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly denied by Tolkien in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967:

Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth].[T 17]

Peter Jackson's film versions of Tolkien's Orcs have been compared to wartime caricatures of the Japanese (here, an American propaganda poster).[26]

Scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics.[27] In The Two Towers, the Ent Treebeard says:[T 18]

It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil![T 18]

The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that.[28] The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent".[29]

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."[26]

Other authors

As a response to the type-casting of orcs as generic evil characters or antagonists, some novels portray events from the point of view of the orcs, or make them more sympathetic characters. Mary Gentle's 1992 novel Grunts! presents orcs as generic infantry, used as metaphorical cannon-fodder.[17] A series of books by Stan Nicholls, Orcs: First Blood, focuses on the conflicts between orcs and humans from the orcs' point of view.[30] In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, Orcs are close to extinction; in his Unseen Academicals it is said that "When the Evil Emperor wanted fighters he got some of the Igors to turn goblins into orcs" to be used as weapons in a Great War, "encouraged" by whips and beatings.[31]

In games

Orcs based on The Lord of the Rings have become a fixture of fantasy fiction and role-playing games. In the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, orcs were among the earliest creatures introduced in the game, and were largely based upon those described by Tolkien.[32] The D&D orcs are a tribal race of hostile and bestial humanoids with muscular frames, large canine teeth and snouts rather than human-like noses.[33] The orc appears in the first edition Monster Manual (1977), where it is described as a fiercely competitive bully, a tribal creature often living underground.[34] The mythology and attitudes of the orcs are described in detail in Dragon #62 (June 1982), in Roger E. Moore's article, "The Half-Orc Point of View",[35] and the orc is further detailed in Paizo Publishing's 2008 book Classic Monsters Revisited.[36]

Games Workshop's Warhammer universe features cunning and brutal Orcs in a fantasy setting, who are driven not so much by a need to do evil as to obtain fulfilment through the act of war.[37] In the Warhammer 40,000, a series of science-fiction games, they are a green-skinned alien species, called 'Orks'.[38] Orcs are an important race in the Warcraft, a high fantasy franchise created by Blizzard Entertainment. Several Orc characters from the Warcraft universe are playable heroes in the crossover multiplayer game Heroes of the Storm.[39] In the Elder Scrolls series, many Orcs or Orsimer are skilled blacksmiths.[40] In Hasbro's Heroscape products, Orcs come from the pre-historic planet Grut.[41] They are blue-skinned, with prominent tusks or horns.[42] Several Orc champions ride prehistoric animals (including a Tyrannosaurus rex,[43] a Velociraptor[44] and sabre-tooth tigers, known as Swogs).[45] The Skylander Voodood from the first game in the series, Spyro's Adventure, is an orc.[46] The 1993 Wizards of the Coast collectible card game Magic: The Gathering involves numerous orc cards.[47]

  • Savage orc
  • For the Love of Waaagh!, an Ork from Warhammer 40,000
  • Orc Grunt, an Orc from Warcraft

Real world conflicts

Since early in the Russo-Ukrainian War beginning in 2014, Ukrainians have used the term "orcs" (орки) to describe and demonize Russian forces and tactics. Use of the word increased when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2022.[48]

See also
  • Haradrim – the dark-skinned "Southrons" who fought for Sauron alongside the Orcs
  • Troll (Middle-earth) – large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect, also used by Sauron

Notes
  1. Here "orcus   [orc].. þrys ꝉ heldeofol" is the redaction given by Pheifer 1974, p. 37n but þrys appears to be a mistranscription for þyrs. The original text uses "ꝉ", the scribal abbreviation for Latin vel meaning "or", which Wright has silently expanded as Anglo-Saxon oððe.
  2. The Corpus Glossary (Corpus Christi College MS. 144, late 8th to early 9th century) has the two glosses: "Orcus, orc" and "Orcus, ðyrs, hel-diobul. Pheifer 1974, p. 37n
  3. Klaeber here takes orcus to be the world and not the god, as does Bosworth & Toller 1898, p. 764: "orc, es; m. The infernal regions (orcus)", though the latter seems to predicate on synthesizing the compound "Orcþyrs" by altering the reading of the Cleopatra glossaries as given by Wright's Voc. ii. that he sources.
  4. Straparola was translated into Spanish in 1583. Independent of this, there is in Spain to this day the folktale of the "huerco" or "güercu", a harbinger of impending death; a shade in the form of the person about to die.
  5. See especially Basile's tales Peruonto and Lo Cuento dell'Uerco.
  6. Parma Eldalamberon volume XII: "Quenya Lexicon Quenya Dictionary": 'Ork' ('orq-') monster, ogre, demon. "orqindi" ogresse. [The original reading of the second entry was >'orqinan' ogresse.< Perhaps the intended meaning of the earlier form was 'region of ogres'; cf. 'kalimban', 'Hisinan'. 'The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa' gives 'ork' 'ogre, giant' and 'orqin' 'ogress', which may be a feminine form. ...]"
  7. In the Cleopatra Glossaries, Folio 69 verso; the entry is illustrated above.

References

Primary
This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.
  1. Carpenter 1981, #144 to Naomi Mitchison 25 April 1954
  2. Tolkien 1994, Appendix C "Elvish names for the Orcs", pp. 289–391
  3. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2005). Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (eds.). Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings (PDF). The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-720907-1.
  4. Tolkien 1955 book 6, ch. 1, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol"
  5. Tolkien 1937, ch. 4, "Over Hill and Under Hill"
  6. Tolkien 1954, Book 3, ch. 3 "The Uruk-hai"
  7. Tolkien 1993, "Myths transformed", text X
  8. Tolkien 1954a, Book 1, ch. 11 "A Knife in the Dark"
  9. Tolkien 1954, Book 3, ch. 9 "Flotsam and Jetsam"
  10. Tolkien 1984b, "The Tale of Tinúviel"
  11. Tolkien 1977, p. 40
  12. Tolkien 1984b, p. 159
  13. Tolkien 1993, "Myths transformed", text VIII
  14. Carpenter 1981, letter 153 to Peter Hastings, draft, September 1954
  15. Carpenter 1981, #210
  16. Carpenter 1981, #71
  17. Carpenter 1981, #294
  18. Tolkien 1954, Book 3, Ch. 4, "Treebeard"

Secondary
  1. "Orc". Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  2. Shippey 2005, pp. 362, 438 (chapter 5, note 14).
  3. Wright, Thomas (1873). A second volume of vocabularies. privately printed. p. 63.
  4. Pheifer, J. D. (1974). Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary. Oxford University Press. pp. 37, 106. ISBN 978-0-19-811164-1.(Repr. Sandpaper Books, 1998 ISBN 0-19-811164-9), Gloss #698: orcus   orc (Épinal); orci   orc (Erfurt).
  5. "Ork". Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal (in Dutch). 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  6. "Nork". Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal (in Dutch). 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  7. Klaeber 1950, p. 5.
  8. Klaeber 1950, p. 25
  9. Klaeber 1950, p. 183: Orcneas: "evil spirits" does not bring out all the meaning. Orcneas is compounded of orc (from the Lat. orcus "the underworld" or Hades) and neas "corpses". Necromancy was practised among the ancient Germans!
  10. Salu, Mary; Farrell, Robert T., eds. (1979). J. R. R. Tolkien, scholar and storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. p. 291. ISBN 978-0-80141-038-3.
  11. Brehaut, Patricia Kathleen (1961). Moot passages in Beowulf (Thesis). Stanford University. p. 8.
  12. Spenser, Edmund (1590). Faerie Queene. Book II, Canto XII, line xlvii.
  13. "Orc" Oxford English Dictionary
  14. "The Water Babies, Illustrated Online Children's Book by Charles Kingsley". The Children's Nursery and its Traditions. Retrieved 13 October 2021. she made him believe in worse things than water-babies—in unicorns, fire-drakes, manticoras, basilisks, amphisbaenas, griffins, phoenixes, rocs, orcs, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, three-bodied geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet
  15. Kennett, John (1970). Hereward the Wake. Glasgow, London: Blackie. ISBN 978-0-216-89101-2. OCLC 30284496. things unspeakable,—dragons, giants, rocs, orcs, witch-whales, griffins, chimeras
  16. Gilliver, Peter; Marshall, Jeremy; Weiner, Edmund (2009). The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-19956-836-9.
  17. Canavan, A. P. (2012). ""Let's hunt some orc!": Reevaluating the Monstrosity of Orcs". New York Review of Science Fiction. Retrieved 7 March 2020. A version of this essay was presented at the International Conference on the Fantastic in 2012.
  18. "The Science of Middle-earth: Sex and the Single Orc". TheOneRing.net. Retrieved 29 May 2009.
  19. Shippey 2005, p. 265.
  20. Tally, Robert T. Jr. (2010). "Let Us Now Praise Famous Orcs: Simple Humanity in Tolkien's Inhuman CreaturesInhuman Creatures". Mythlore. 29 (1). article 3.
  21. Shippey 2001, pp. 131–133.
  22. Magoun, John F. G. (2006). "South, The". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Routledge. pp. 622–623. ISBN 1-135-88034-4.
  23. O'Hehir, Andrew (6 June 2001). "A curiously very great book". Salon.com. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  24. Turner, Jenny (15 November 2001). "Reasons for Liking Tolkien". London Review of Books. 23 (22).
  25. Tally, Robert (2019). "Demonizing the Enemy, Literally: Tolkien, Orcs, and the Sense of the World Wars". Humanities. 8 (1): 54. doi:10.3390/h8010054. ISSN 2076-0787.
  26. Ibata, David (12 January 2003). "'Lord' of racism? Critics view trilogy as discriminatory". The Chicago Tribune.
  27. Rogers, William N., II; Underwood, Michael R. (2000). Sir George Clark (ed.). Gagool and Gollum: Exemplars of Degeneration in King Solomon's Mines and The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 121–132. ISBN 978-0-313-30845-1.
  28. Straubhaar, Sandra Ballif (2004). Chance, Jane (ed.). Myth, Late Roman History, and Multiculturalism in Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Tolkien and the invention of myth : a reader. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 101–117. ISBN 978-0-8131-2301-1.
  29. Lobdell, Jared (2004). The World of the Rings. Open Court. p. 116. ISBN 978-0875483030.
  30. "Stan Nicholls". Fantasticfiction.co.uk. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
  31. Pratchett, Terry (2009). Unseen Academicals. Doubleday. p. 389. ISBN 978-0385609340.
  32. "'Orc' (from Orcus) is another term for an ogre or ogre-like creature. Being useful fodder for the ranks of bad guys, monsters similar to Tolkien's orcs are also in both games." Gygax, Gary (March 1985). "On the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D games". The Dragon. No. 95. pp. 12–13.
  33. Mohr, Joseph (7 December 2019). "Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons". Old School Role Playing. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  34. Gygax, Gary. Monster Manual (TSR, 1977)
  35. Moore, Roger E. "The Half-Orc Point of View." Dragon #62 (TSR, June 1982).
  36. Baur, Wolfgang, Jason Bulmahn, Joshua J. Frost, James Jacobs, Nicolas Logue, Mike McArtor, James L. Sutter, Greg A. Vaughan, Jeremy Walker. Classic Monsters Revisited (Paizo, 2008) pages 52–57.
  37. Priestley, Rick; Thornton, Jake (2000). Warhammer Fantasy Battles Army Book: Orcs & Goblins (6th ed.). Games Workshop: Nottingham. pp. 10–11.
  38. Sanders, Rob. "Xenos: Seven Alien Species With A Shot At Conquering the 40k Galaxy". Rob Sanders Speculative Fiction. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  39. "Another orc enters the Heroes of the Storm battleground". Destructoid. 6 October 2016. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  40. Stewart, Charlie (14 September 2020). "Why the Orcs Could Have a Huge Role in The Elder Scrolls 6". GameRant. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  41. "Blade Gruts". Hasbro.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  42. "Heavy Gruts". Hasbro.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  43. "Grimnak". Hasbro.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  44. "Tornak". Hasbro.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  45. "Swog Rider". Hasbro.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
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