orcs and goblins- what's the difference???

[Boromir88]

I just wanted to point out that their is a difference between orcs and goblins in the movies.~AragornII

And as you point out that was in the movies and invented by Jackson. There is no difference between Orcs and Goblins as Tolkien points out:

They had run a long way shouting--he could not remember how far or how long; and then suddenly they had crashed right into a group of Orcs: they were standing listening, and they did not appear to see Merry and Pippin until they were almost in their arms. Then they yelled and dozens of other goblins had sprung out of the trees. Merry and he had drawn their swords, but the Orcs did not wish to fight, and had tried only to lay hold of them, even when Merry had cut off several of their arms and hands. Good old Merry!~The Uruk-hai

There the words are used interchangeably in a couple sentences. And...

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc ’demon’, but only because of phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be .corruptions’. They are not based on direct expierence of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think),.....The name has the form orch (pl. yrch) in Sindarian and uruk in the Black Speech~Letter 144

Also, I would disagree with the assertion that Goblins are typically smaller than Orcs. They're the same and just two words to mean the same creatures as we see in The Departure of Boromir:

There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature.....

Bottomline, orcs=goblins, goblins=orcs...one's not smaller than the other, they're not "weaker," they're the same.