... vague in meaning, referring to anything that caused fear to the
Elves, any dubious shape or shadow, or prowling creature. In
Sindarin urug has a similar use. It might indeed by translated ‘bogey’. But the form
orch seems at once to have been applied to the Orcs, as soon as they appeared; and
Orch, pl.
Yrch, class-plural
Orchoth remained the regular name for these
creatures in Sindarin afterwards.
<snip>
The form in
Adunaic uruk,
urkhu may be direct from
Quenya or Sindarin; and this form underlies the words for Orc in the
languages of
Men of the North-West in the Second and Third
Ages. The Orcs themselves adopted it, for the fact that it referred to terror and detestation delighted them. The word
uruk that occurs in the
Black Speech, devised (it is said) by
Sauron to serve as a lingua franca for his subjects, was probably borrowed by him from the Elvish tongues of earlier times. If referred, however, specially to the trained and disciplined Orcs of the regiments of
Mordor. Lesser breeds seem to have been called
snaga.