   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 &mdash; morgoth, sauron and saruman. although not entirely dim-witted and occasionally 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 in some of his unpublished early work, tolkien appears to distinguish orcs from goblins. by the time of his published work, however, the terms had become synonymous. the hobbit generally uses the term goblin, while the lord of the rings prefers orc. the opponents of the dwarves in "dwarf and goblin war" of the hobbit are described as orcs in appendix a of the lord of the rings. no distinction is made by size; large orcs, including the uruk-hai, are just as much goblins as are smaller ones. ==tolkien's influences==  orc is from old english orcneas, which appears in the epic poem beowulf, and refers to one of the races who are called the offspring of cain during the initial description of grendel ("Ãanon untydras ealle onwocon,/eotenas ond ylfe, ond orcneas," ll. 111-112). in a letter of 1954 tolkien gave orc as "demon" and claimed he used the word because of its "phonetic suitability" â its similarity to various equivalent terms in his middle-earth languages. in an essay on elven languages, written in 1954, tolkien gives meaning of 'orc' as "evil spirit or bogey" and goes on to state that the origin of the old english word is the latin name orcus â god of the underworld. about the goblins of the hobbit, tolkien wrote: they are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, i suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition ... especially as it appears in george macdonald, except for the soft feet which i never believed in. ==middle-earth terms for orcs== in the high-elven tongue quenya, the word for "orc" was urco, plural urqui, meaning "bogey", or "bogeyman", that is, something that pr
Fictional_cannibals Fictional_goblins Middle-earth_Orcs Middle-earth_races Orcs