So that’s where Tolkien got “Orc”

ByJohn Brown

Tolkien was a master of words with sounds that connote meaning. But I often find that a lot of his work was not produced from thin air. Case in point: I was looking today at the word “ogre.” Check out this etymology from the OED.

French ogre (late 12th cent. in Old French in sense ‘fierce pagan’, c1300 in sense ‘man-eating giant’, attested again from 1613; also hogre (1704 in the passage translated in quot. 1713 at main sense)), further etymology uncertain and disputed.

French ogre is perh. < classical Latin Orcus, the name of the god of the infernal regions, Hades, Pluto (further etymology uncertain), with metathesis of r (perh. influenced by words such as bougre BOUGRE n.), or perh. < post-classical Latin Ugri, Ungri, Ongri, applied by early writers to the Hungarians or Magyars (see UGRIAN n.). Cf. (< classical Latin Orcus) Middle French orque hell (16th cent.; prob. a later reborrowing), and also Italian orco demon, monster (13th cent.), Spanish huerco devil, personification of death or hell (1330-1900), Sardinian orcu demon, and early modern Dutch orck unruly person (Dutch regional ork). Spanish ogro (1787-1900) is a borrowing from French ogre.

In folklore and mythology: a man-eating monster, usually represented as a hideous giant. In extended use: a person resembling or suggestive of an ogre; a cruel, irascible, or fearsome-looking person.

But Tolkien’s not the only one using his brains. Here’s one from Robert Jordan.

sangrayle, -grayll(e, seynt graal, 7-9 sangreal, 9 sangreall. [a. OF. Saint Graal ‘Holy Grail’: see SAINT a. and GRAIL.
  The pseudo-etymological form sang roial (confusing the word with SANG-ROYAL 2) appears in AF. of the 15th c.: see Godefr. Compl. s.v. SANC. Another spurious etymology formerly common appears in the following quot.:
  1685 STILLINGFL. Orig. Brit. i. 13 Others think that the word was Sangreal, being some of Christ’s real blood..said to be somewhere found by King Arthur.]

1. = GRAIL.

a1450 Le Morte Arth. 10 The knights of the table Round, The sangrayle when they had sought. c1450 Merlin ii. 32 Thi boke shalbe cleped the boke of the seynt Graal. 1470-85 MALORY Arthur II. xi. 88 Soone after the aduentures of the Sangrayll shalle come among yow and be encheued. 1808 SCOTT Marm. I. Introd. Epist. 268 He took the Sangreal’s holy quest. 1871 G. MEREDITH H. Richmond II. 145 They bear the veiled sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring of stainless cloud.

Zing!

Share

Similar Posts

  • A happy friend is worth about $20,000

    ByJohn Brown

    This is based on research, folks.

    But we didn’t need scientists to tell us this. The old Frank Kapra films like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE that have been demonstrating this for years.  I think we need a new government measurement. We’d call it the GDH, the gross domestic happiness index. And then we can see who really is rich, e.g. my five bunko buddies cancel out your Lexus any day.

    Joking aside, this shows how much social interaction is built into our genes. And why we tend to tire of congenital whiners, complainers, and sadsacks. Not to say that people who are sad shouldn’t be. But that a happy friend or family member, who listens with kindness, can be a great boon to someone who is suffering.

    People with the most social connections — friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives — were also the happiest, the data showed. “Each additional happy person makes you happier,” Christakis said.

    “Imagine that I am connected to you and you are connected to others and others are connected to still others. It is this fabric of humanity, like an American patch quilt.”

    Each person sits on a different-colored patch. “Imagine that these patches are happy and unhappy patches. Your happiness depends on what is going on in the patch around you,” Christakis said.

    “It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on.”

    And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered.

    “If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent,” Fowler said. “A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent,” he added.

    A happy third-degree friend — the friend or a friend of a friend — increases a person’s chances of being happy by 6 percent.

    “But every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you’ll be unhappy by 7 percent,” Fowler said.

    The finding is interesting but it is useful, too Fowler said.

    “Among other benefits, happiness has been shown to have an important effect on reduced mortality, pain reduction, and improved cardiac function. So better understanding of how happiness spreads can help us learn how to promote a healthier society,” he said.

    The study also fits in with other data that suggested — in 1984 — that having $5,000 extra increased a person’s chances of becoming happier by about 2 percent.

    “A happy friend is worth about $20,000,” Christakis said.

    Here’s the full article.

    Share