Old English
Old English glossaries record the word OE orc corresponding with Latin Orcus (deity of the Underworld), and synonymous with thyrs "ogre" (cognate of Old Norse: þurs), as well as "hell devil".
The Latin: Orcus is glossed as "Old English: Orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol" as given in the first Cleopatra Glossary (10th cent.), and on this entry Thomas Wright wrote, "Orcus was the name for Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand the explanation of hel-deofol. Orc, in Anglos-Saxon, like thyrs, means a spectre, or goblin."
Probably the lone literary example is from Beowulf, and its poet found use of the orc- stem in orcneas, one of the tribes of creatured named alongside elves and ettins (giants) that have been condemned by God:
|
|
The compound orcneas is designated "evil spirits" above, but its accurate meaning is uncertain. Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses" and that the translation "evils spirits" failed to do justice.
The lexicography has been complicated by the Bosworth-Toller dictionary's conjecture that orcneas devolved from the form *orcen possibly meaning "(?) a sea-monster," possibly related to Icelandic: orkn (örkn)
Famous quotes containing the word english:
“The English are a nation of consummate cant.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)