Etymology

orca

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Today it means: A sea mammal (Orcinus orca) related to dolphins and porpoises, commonly called the killer whale. Full definition →

Latin orca
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The story

  1. Latin · learned borrowing fromorca“tun, cask; whale”
  2. English todayorca

Learned borrowing from Latin orca (“tun, cask; whale”), see there for more. Although the origin is obscure, the sometimes-cited association with orcus (“underworld”) is folk-etymology. Doublet of orc.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.