Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prime_Evil" data-source="post: 1779349" data-attributes="member: 11984">In Old English, the term 'orc' is used to refer to a category of demon or ogre. It first appears in Old English glosses of about AD 800 and in the compound word orcneas ("monsters") in lines 112-113 of the poem Beowulf: Thanon untydras ealle onwoconeotenas ond ylfe, ond orcneas,swylce gigantas"Then woke all evil broods: etins, elves and orcs, and also giants."The word "orcneas" is a plural of a word whose (unattested) singular would have been orcen. It is not entirely clear what this word meant, but it seems to refer to a humanoid monster of some sort. Some commentators (such as Fred C. Robinson in his 'Beowulf and the Appositive style', p83) have suggested that as with the Italian orco ("ogre"), the term 'orcneas' ultimately derives from the Latin term 'Orcus'.This word  used by classical authors to refer to the god of the underworld -- the Roman god Pluto. Latin authors never used this word to refer to a demon or anything similar. It picked up this sense when it was revived in the the late sixteenth century (possibly by Milton?). The word Orcus was never very common until Gygax used it as the name of a demon lord. There is also a phrase in an Old English glossary  -- orc-thyrs othe hel-deofol which means 'orc-demon or hell-devil'. Again, the meaning of the orc itself is not entirely clear here, but 'ogre' is probably fairly close.  The term orc-thyrs is particularly interesting because in the Germanic languages the term 'Thrys' or 'Thurse' (Old English þyrs - ðÿrs; Old Norse þurs) was used to  denoted an entire category of humanoid monsters related to giants. For an example of this usage, see Thrym's Lay in the Old Norse Poetic Edda. Norse literature refers to different sorts, such as rime-thurses (ice giants) and berg-thurses (mountain giants). In Old Norse, the terms "thurse" and "ettin" (related to Old Norse jötunn or giant) are fairly interchangeable, but modern authors usually distinguish between these two races. Germanic mythology gave rise to the Middle English 'thurs' or 'thirs' (ðürs) -- a monster or spectre. Wycliffe used this term in a note on the term lamia in his 1382 translation of the Bible:that is, a thirs or a beste hauende the bodi like a womman and horses feet. (note to Isaiah 34:14)The Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) translated this as “screech owl”, or “night monster” which was retained in the Revised Version. The word 'thurse' resurfaced in the 16th and 17th centuries to refer to hobgoblins. There were also hobthrush (adapted from hob + thurse) and hobthrust -- alternate terms for hobgoblins.</blockquote>

Verification