The Truth of the Uruk-hai

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

As I said, it was only my personal opinion. Interesting, though, I never knew Aragorn spoke about the gear. It's the job of the translator, I suppose, because as I know it, the sentence is "They don't look like Orcs at all." However, what you say is just one moment where the Orcs are mentioned; another is at Helm's Deep, and don't forget Treebeard's words - that's what I consider quite important. And concerning the Uruk from Moria, he was a Mordor Orc, like for example Shagrat. And if he was sent from Mordor to Misty Mountains, he was probably one of the well-trained, hardened warriors, he was probably big and strong even for his kind, just as individual.

However the part you quote brings up one important thing, and that's Gandalf's words about the Mordor Uruks in Moria. He describes them pretty well:

"There are Orcs, very many of them," he said. "And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor."

The Uruks are mentioned as large here. However, I am pretty sure that "large" means just "big in comparison to the small mountain maggots who are all over the place". And the "huge orc-chieftain" is probably the biggest among them all, however, he is described as

a huge orc-chieftain, almost man-high, clad in black mail from head to foot

which means that even though he is huge, he is almost man-high. Note this, please, it will be useful later. Another thing we are told about him is that

His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals

Interestingly, "swart" is one of the words used especially for Uruk-hai of Saruman. In connection with them, the words "large, swart, slant-eyed Orcs with great bows and short broad-bladed swords" are used several times; probably to emphasise the fact that these were them who killed Boromir (as Uglúk also says, "we killed the great warrior"), but also it somewhat looks like specific sign. The speciality of Uruk-hai of Isengard is that they are "slant-eyed" - that's how you should recognise an Orc, or even a Man from Isengard: that there is something about his eyes. In Flotsam and Jetsam, Merry says:

Most of [the men in Saruman's host] were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed. Do you know, they reminded me at once of that Southerner at Bree: only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were.

This concerns these "squint-eyed fellows" we all know. Note please, that these are not Orcs. Merry says that there were Orcs, wolf-riders, and then Men; which he divides into these cathegories.

To make it clear, we have:
1) normal Orcs ("mountain-maggots" or in Mordor "snagas"), everyone knows them and that's what an Elf, a Gondorian, a Hobbit, or a Wizard imagines when you say "Orc"
2) Uruks, maybe or maybe not different groups of Isengard Uruk-hai (like Uglúk) and Mordor Uruks (like the "huge orc-chieftain" in Moria)
3) "goblin-faces", the Men that Merry saw. But these were clearly Men, not Orcs.

However it's also clear that Treebeard spoke about Uglúk and his Uruk-hai when he spoke about crossbreeding Orcs and Men. This implies what I said before, that the Uruk-hai of Saruman were still somewhat different, more Man-like than the Uruks of Sauron. The other thing is also that you never see these "goblin-faces" in Sauron's armies. Apart from Easterlings, Southrons and Variags of Khand there are no large groups of Men in his service; in Mordor there are just normal Orcs (i.e. Snaga and Uruks).