Talk:orc

orco and Tolkien
This orco was the inspiration to J. R. R. Tolkien's orcs in his The Lord of the Rings. In a text published in The War of the Jewels, Tolkien stated:

Note. The word used in translation of Q urko, S orch, is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connexion between them. The English word is now generally supposed to be derived from Latin Orcus.

Also, in an unpublished letter sent to Gene Wolfe, Tolkien also made this comment:[1]

Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus -- Hell. But I doubt this, though the matter is too involved to set out here.

^ http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/wolfemountains.html

--Wikipedia

"orc" in the sense of "Russian soldier"
The sense is inspired by the current war in Ukraine (see:, , , ) and has entered the English language. Clearly it's slang and it's also derogatory. Finding usage however is not difficult. Bommbass (talk) 18:37, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Slang racist propaganda words of pop internet culture have nothing at all to do with the meanings of millennia old words. Rosengarten Zu Worms (talk) 18:05, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Orc is a transliteration of what must be a Ukrainian military slang word. DCDuring (talk) 20:33, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * A dictionary describes usage. Words can be slang. Words can be racist. Words can gain additional meanings. That doesn't mean those meanings don't deserve an entry. That doesn't mean either that we (as Wiktionary) condone such usage. The fact is that orc has widespread and attestable usage as "Russian soldier". You can ask for attestations; that's fair. You however can't use your personal opinion on the word (e.g., a personal dislike that a millenia-old word gains a specific derogatory meaning) to exclude those meanings. Bommbass (talk) 21:01, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I thought Ukrainian use the Cyrillic alphabet. DCDuring (talk) 21:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It entered the English language though - and that's attestable. But perhaps a fair point to make a separate etymology for it, as a loan word from Ukrainian. Bommbass (talk) 10:50, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It is not widespread at all. I have never encountered this word and I have been an English professor for half a century. A few people on joke/propaganda websites do not have the power to change words. The word is from the Roman/Greek god of the underworld, Orcus, and the Tyrolian monster Orkise. It has nothing to do with anything Ukrainian. Just because a website exists, does not mean anything on it is real. Rosengarten Zu Worms (talk) 20:29, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The cites suggested above have it in quotation marks with a definition, suggesting that it has not entered English yet. DCDuring (talk) 21:55, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The cites above were not attestations, but sources to give context about the origin of the word. I have provided quotations now in the entry. Bommbass (talk) 21:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The origin of the word has nothing to do with internet memes. Save that for urbandictionary. This is supposed to be an academic site. Rosengarten Zu Worms (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

The policy on this is clear: if it has at least three citations in durably archived sources spanning over a year it can stay. If the first attestation is less than a year old, which likely applies here, then it gets tagged as a / and is allowed provisionally until one year passes; but it still should have three good citations of usage from the year of appearance. 70.172.194.25 21:27, 8 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Where is this policy? If this is really policy, I am never coming back to this site again. Rosengarten Zu Worms (talk) 11:39, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
 * The policy for hot words is within WT:CFI. I can certainly see myself uttering it.  99% of your academic career is irrelevant to this sense, unless you can argue why I am an unusual native English speaker.  And as far as relevant origins are concerned, the relevant origin is Tolkien's works. --RichardW57m (talk) 16:26, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Threatening to leave a website never works, because nobody ever gets sad that one person out of millions will no longer be around. It's a very overused cliché, you might want to rethink your strategy here. -- benlisquare T•C 00:17, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

RFV discussion: March–May 2022
Sense Russian soldier. It's probably been used, but not as a distinct sense, just a general term of abuse.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The usage that might be English usage that I've seen is in Western news articles reporting on Ukrainian use of the term. Presumably, the term is attestable in Ukrainian. Orc is almost always accompanied by a "translation", usually "Russian soldier". DCDuring (talk) 21:28, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I have added several quotations to the entry itself. The term indeed originates from Ukrainian and is mostly used in the context of the Ukraine-Russia wars. Bommbass (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It would have been nice if they were properly formatted.
 * At least 4/6 are from sources that, prima facie, are not-durably archived. (See WT:ATTEST.) The same 4/6 are fairly clearly written by authors and editors for whom English is not their native language and are all part of Ukrainian PR. OTOH the Time and Daily Kos cites, though possibly not durable archived, do seem to use the word as defined, though the Daily Kos uses it in uppercase, as if it were a demonym, which seems a meaningful distinction in this context.
 * All things considered, it would be better if we did not rely on the Ukrainian-source cites and it would help all the cites were in lower case. They could be from UseNet, though that has become difficult to efficiently search. DCDuring (talk) 16:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Pre-"special military operation" cites include:
 * 2015, April 16, Leo Barraclough, "Russia Bans ‘Child 44’ for Portraying Soviets as a ‘Bloody Mass of Orcs and Ghouls’", Variety
 * Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky said the movie, which was due to be released on Friday, portrayed Soviet citizens as “physical and moral subhumans, a bloody mass of orcs and ghouls.” Medinsky said the film makes Russia out to be “not a country but Mordor.”
 * This might fit a broader definition. DCDuring (talk) 16:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

cited. I reformatted the existing cites, and added a couple from 2015 (so this is no longer a hot sense). Kiwima (talk) 04:56, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 00:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Ethnic slur?
The edit history is replete with people adding, removing, adding, removing, adding, removing "ethnic slur" as a label. Unfortunately, the prior discussion at Tea room/2022/August was rather small. - -sche (discuss) 23:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I know this is rather late, but Russian soldiers and/or war criminals in Ukraine are not an ethnicity. If it becomes attestable that its usage just describes anyone who happens to be Russian, then by all means. In the meantime, it's comically obvious that anyone who would label it as an "ethnic slur" isn't here to build a dictionary but instead to poison the discourse surrounding Russia's continued and illegal invasion of Ukraine. TheTechnician27 (talk) 22:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * In English, it is used almost exclusively as an ethnic slur towards Russians – it is not entirely equivalent to the Ukrainian slang word as it was used in 2014. Many ethnic slurs originate from terms originally applied to a section of the population. The deletion of the ethnic slur category by such neutral and academically-minded actors like "SlavaUkraini69" serves to push a narrative of moral infallibility of any pro-Ukrainian forces, which is sadly completely hegemonic on Wikipedia.
 * Examples of the word used as a slur:
 * https://twitter.com/moman12612273/status/1724028741603438652
 * https://twitter.com/Geord454545/status/1724017673955148158
 * https://twitter.com/Irene_Dr_/status/1724030777250259380 AskaLagaj (talk) 11:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)