The Ents are a race of sapient tree-like creatures in the J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. Known by the elves as the Onodrim, they were created at roughly the same time in Middle Earth's history as the elves. Though already sapient, they didn't know how to speak, which the elves then taught them. They were created as guardians of the trees, protecting them from those who were likely to chop them down, such as the dwarves and Sauron's Orcs. The word 'ent' is derived from the original Anglo-Saxon word for 'giant', meaning that ents, though only tree-people in Tolkien's work, could be anything larger than the normal human but still mortal, including giants, trolls and Grendel from the Norse myth of Beowulf.