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Word of the Day – Monday, December 19th

 


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ORC (ork)

Villain of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

Common clues: Frodo foe; "Lord of the Rings" baddie; Tolkien monster; Tolkien beast; Middle Earth marauder; Mythical ogre; “The Hobbit” humanoid; Mythical monster

Crossword puzzle frequency: 4 times a year

Frequency in English language: 15831 / 86800

News: Lord of the Rings Scholar to Write Hobbit Cookbook

Video: Lord of the Rings Rohan Army


The wise speak only of what they know ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings, Orcs or Orks are a race of creatures who are used as soldiers and henchmen by both the greater and lesser villains of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings — Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman. The Orcs, here called Goblins, also work independently as the common antagonists in The Hobbit.




Although not dim-witted and even crafty, they are portrayed as miserable beings, hating everyone including themselves and their masters, whom they serve out of fear. They make no beautiful things, but rather design cunning devices made to hurt and destroy.


In his later, post-Lord of the Rings writings (including The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and many essays published in The Peoples of Middle-earth), Tolkien preferred the spelling "Ork", evidently mainly to avoid the form Orcish, which would be naturally pronounced with the c as /s/ instead of /k/ in English.[citation needed] Tolkien indeed used the adjective Orkish.







This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Orc (Middle-earth)".