Orc in common to them. A monster called "Orcus" is mentioned in Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" (Book II, Canto XII, line xlvii). The word ultimately comes from Latin "Orcus", the demonic Roman god of death, who should not be confused with Pluto, the god of the underworld, and has transformed by several stages from the meanings "underworld", "hell", "devil", "evil creature" to "ogre". Tolkien and the lexicons he used attributed the origin of the doubtful Old English "orc" to "Orcus" and in one of his invented languages, the word for orc also had the form "orco". Words derived from or related
Orcus Orcus Orcus () was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Italic and Roman mythology. As with Hades, the name of the god was also used for the underworld itself. In the later tradition, he was conflated with Dis Pater. Orcus was portrayed in paintings in Etruscan tombs as a hairy, bearded giant. A temple to Orcus may have existed on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It is likely that he was transliterated from the Greek daemon Horkos, the personification of Oaths and a son of Eris. The origins of Orcus may have lain in Etruscan religion.