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

[Formendacil]

Sweet!

I have my own place on LMP's Great List.

Albeit a lowish one...

However, to the subject at hand...

Morsul, I really hate to put it so bluntly, but using other Downers as an authority is absurd folly. If that were permissible, you could use yourself as an authority, and we would all have to agree with you- even though we don't- because you are a Barrow-Downer.

The only person who's words we can take as authoritative are those belonging to J.R.R. Tolkien. And, as far as I can see, there has been a lot of evidence presented on this thread that Tolkien used Goblin and Ork interchangeably (albeit the first dominated The Hobbit while the second dominated all other works). I have yet to see a smidgeon of evidence that Uruk-hai (meaning literally Ork-people) were in any was a crossbreeding of "Orks and goblins".

Mind you, since Orks and Goblins are one and the same, and Uruk refers, in colloquial ork-speech, to larger orks, it is entirely possible- though foolish to the point of tomfoolery, to say that Uruks are bred from Orks and Goblins. One could also say that Goblins are bred from Orks and Uruks, or that Orks are bred from Uruks and Goblins.

The three terms are interchangeable- save that Uruk, as applied in everyday Orkish, is used solely for the larger, more dominant members of the race. Snaga is the applicable term for the smaller ones.