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orc.

Any of several large, ferocious sea creatures, now especially the killer whale.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɔɹk/General-American/ɔːk/Received-Pronunciation
  1. Any of several large, ferocious sea creatures, now especially the killer whale.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle French orque, Italian orca, and their source, Latin orca (“type of whale”). Doublet of orca.

noun/ɔɹk/General-American/ɔːk/Received-Pronunciation
  1. A mythical evil monstrous humanoid creature, usually quite aggressive and often green.

  2. A Russian soldier or gangster.

    derogatory · slang
  3. A Russian person.

    Internet · broadly · ethnic · slur
Where this word comes from

Probably from Italian orco (“man-eating giant”); later revived by J. R. R. Tolkien, partly after Old English orc, which he took to mean "demon". Both are from Latin Orcus (“the underworld; the god Pluto”). Doublet of ogre and Orcus. Etymology 2 sense 2 is a semantic loan from Ukrainian орк (ork, “evil monstrous humanoid creature; orc”) or Russian орк (ork), both from English orc and possibly under the influence of Russian у́рка (úrka, “criminal”, prison slang). Popularized in English in 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.