ogre

plural ogres

1. artsA large, grotesque, brutish humanoid monster, typically marked by great strength and a propensity to kill or devour humans.

   From his end of the hall Beowulf watched the ogre, weighed his endowment, and waited to see how Grendel would strike.

   1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 29

   3 more examples

   And in the seventh tale of the third day of the same collection, when Corvetto had hidden himself under the Ogre's bed to steal his quilt, "he began to pull quite gently, when the Ogre awoke, and bid his wife not to pull the clothes that way, or she'd strip him, and he would get his death of cold." "Why, it's you that are stripping me," replied the Ogress, "and you have not left a stitch on me." "Where the devil is the quilt?" says the Ogre[.]

   1828, Thomas Keightley, Fairy Mythology, volume II, page 237

   If I came suddenly upon a well where women were drawing water or children bathing, a sudden flight was the certain result; which things occurring day after day, were very unpleasant to a person who does not like to be disliked, and who had never been accustomed to be treated as an ogre.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 350

   And the conquest of the ogres comes at the right moment: not in earliest youth, though the nicors are referred in Beowulf's geogoðfeore as a presage of the kind of hero we have to deal with[.]

   1936, J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, published 1976, page 32

2. figurativelyA cruel person.

   People are going to think I'm an ogre if I refuse to buy coffee for my little brother!

1. A city in central Latvia.