1559: ogre and orc Mar 22, 2019

As mentioned in yesterday's post, the term for 'ogre' comes from a Roman god of the underworld, Orcus. The similarity between [k] and [g] have been explained before, but notably this switch did not occur for the other descendent, 'orc'. It is likely, however, that this is because 'orc' was reinforced by the 'orcneas', or that it was taken from Latin or Italian more directly. Notably, the word only meant 'monster' in a generic way until Tolkien popularized the word with the specific meaning it has today in the Lord of the Rings.