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<blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5352910" data-attributes="member: 15538">The point I was making was that Gygax's orcs were never infringing. It was more like, &quot;Hm, Tolkien used orc (&quot;ogre&quot;) to mean a bestial humanoid, I can do that, too.&quot; I assume it's the Gygaxian sense of humor that led to the orcs being described as pig-like; although Tolkien's orcs were broad-nosed, they were not pig-like. Orc, of course, is an unrelated British word meaning pig or boar. So to reiterate, as this point seems to have been missed; Tolkien did not invent the word orc, it is a cognate of ogre, and those words all come from a word for demon, orc or ork, which comes from the Latin Orcus. Tolkien believed that orc (&quot;demon&quot;) was probably inadvertently confused with an Old English word of a similar sound meaning &quot;monster,&quot; but Wikipedia says he was almost certainly mistaken. Orcus -&gt; orcIt's kind of like sherbet/sorbet. Other D&amp;D isms include:drow - derro - druagh - duergar These are all the same word, referring to subterranean dwarves or fairies.treant - ettin - jotunTreant is an invented to satisfy the Tolkien estate's claim on ent. Ent and ettin are, of course, both cognates of jotun. All mean &quot;giant.&quot;Bahamut - behemoth Bahamut and behemoth are the same word, transliterated in two different ways. dragon - drakeYup, those are the same word.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pawsplay, post: 5352910, member: 15538"] The point I was making was that Gygax's orcs were never infringing. It was more like, "Hm, Tolkien used orc ("ogre") to mean a bestial humanoid, I can do that, too." I assume it's the Gygaxian sense of humor that led to the orcs being described as pig-like; although Tolkien's orcs were broad-nosed, they were not pig-like. Orc, of course, is an unrelated British word meaning pig or boar. So to reiterate, as this point seems to have been missed; Tolkien did not invent the word orc, it is a cognate of ogre, and those words all come from a word for demon, orc or ork, which comes from the Latin Orcus. Tolkien believed that orc ("demon") was probably inadvertently confused with an Old English word of a similar sound meaning "monster," but Wikipedia says he was almost certainly mistaken. Orcus -> orc It's kind of like sherbet/sorbet. Other D&D isms include: drow - derro - druagh - duergar These are all the same word, referring to subterranean dwarves or fairies. treant - ettin - jotun Treant is an invented to satisfy the Tolkien estate's claim on [i]ent[/i]. Ent and ettin are, of course, both cognates of jotun. All mean "giant." Bahamut - behemoth Bahamut and behemoth are the same word, transliterated in two different ways. dragon - drake Yup, those are the same word. [/QUOTE]

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