Male and Female Orcs

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Galin

As for Hobgoblin I just think Tolkien chose an existing 'goblin word' from the Primary World and used it -- however 'wrongly' he thought he had applied it, after publication. Plus I don't know (I'm not a trained linguist myself) how accurate it is to say 'hob-' means 'hole' based on hobbit

Holbytla means 'Hole-builder', and hobbit is a theoretical worn-down form of this word. Someone on line (elsewhere) posted that this type of assimilation (l becoming b, as it appears has occured at least) is common enough in languages, but I haven't really had time to look into this myself.


Anyway as far as -hai goes we now know it means 'folk' due to Words, Phrases, and Passages.

So Uruk-hai means 'orc-folk' -- but since uruk 'orc' became distinguished from snaga it means 'great-soldier orc-folk'

So in that case, it may not be proper to use "Uruk-Hai" to describe a single big orc (The phrase "an Uruk-hai" may be incorrect Actually now that I look at it Tolkein never does use it that way, singularly they are "an Uruk") In that case please disregard my latter statements under those circumstances a single souped up troll would be "an Olog" a singe Wose would be an Oghor and a warg would be whatever a Warg was (though it is likey Orcish has a different word for Wargs than ordinary wolves)

[Rumil]

Very nice one skip!

Alfirin, no disagreement from me re orcs and goblins.

'Hob' appears in all sorts of folklore monster-type names etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hob_(folklore) (also see disambiguation page), and 'hobbledehoy' http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-hob1.htm for an ungraceful man, also 'Old Hob' referring to the devil.

I'm surprised JRRT never analysed the philology, maybe he did!