Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A giant or monster in legends and fairy tales that eats humans.
- n. A person who is felt to be particularly cruel, brutish, or hideous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In fairy tales and popular legend, a giant or hideous monster of malignant disposition, supposed to live on human flesh; hence, one likened to or supposed to resemble such a monster.
Wiktionary
- n. mythology A type of brutish giant from folk tales that eats human flesh.
- n. figuratively A brutish man whose behavior resembles that of the mythical ogre.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An imaginary monster, or hideous giant of fairy tales, who lived on human beings; hence, any frightful giant; a cruel monster.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (folklore) a giant who likes to eat human beings
- n. a cruel wicked and inhuman person
Etymologies
- First attested in the 18th century, from French ogre, from Latin Orcus ("god of the underworld"), from Ancient Greek Όρκος (Horkos), the personified demon of oaths (ὅρκος ("oath")) who inflicts punishment upon perjurers. (Wiktionary)
- French, probably ultimately from Latin Orcus, god of the underworld. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Defense of that contemptible ogre is the very farthest thing from my mind.”
Think Progress » FEMA Abruptly Abandons Long-Term Recovery Office In New Orleans
“I laugh because the ogre is killed!' she replied, 'and because the prince who killed it is sleeping in my house.”
“So he called the ogre and asked her of him for his wife; but the ogre said it was not his affair, for he had learned that very morning that Violet was the daughter of Cola Aniello.”
“They both seemed to have an "ogre" - whelmingly good time!”
Wendy Diamond: Howl-oween Pet Costume Party Full of Canine Celebrities
“Kafka envisioned a man transformed into a gigantic insect; Homer described the plight of men transformed into pigs; in Shrek 2 an ogre is transformed into a human being, and a donkey into a steed; in Star Trek a scheming villain forcibly occupies Captain Kirk's body so as to take command of the Enterprise; in The Tale of the Body Thief, Anne Rice tells of a vampire and a human being who agree to trade bodies for a day; and in 13 Going on 30 a teenager wakes up as thirty-year-old Jennifer Garner.”
“It is also rather silly to insist that the ogre was a dolt: his IQ was measured by his captors at 138, which means that he had greater analytical abilities than... well, probably most leading democratic politicians.”
Confession of a Broken Planner, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“The ogre was the most monstrous thing the Solamnic warrior had ever come across.”
The Reign of Istar
“He explained that the ogre was a vegetarian, so would not crunch our bones.”
Question Quest
“Now, as the ogre was a subject of the Prince's father he could not refuse him this trifling pleasure; so he offered him all the rooms in his house; if one was not enough, and his very life itself.”
“When he was young and had both legs -- before something marred him; the translator said 'ogre' -- the sun was always the same brightness and the days were always the same length.”
The Ringworld Engineers
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ogre’.
-
Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
-
MYTH - spooky creatures
carrion-eater, solar bird, giant boar, black dog, guardian, fire giant, marsh nymph, fish pike, undead, skeleton, horned snake, pegasus and 607 more...
-
Dungeons and Dragons
Would you like to join our party? We just started a new campaign.
For more general lists about role-playing games, see brandelion's RPG and lampbane's Tales of the Dread Gazebo.dungeons and dragons, d&d, elf, orc, halfling, drow, giant, troll, kobold, rpg, d20, human and 100 more...
-
Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
-
Phantasmas
Ouroboros, chimera, incubus, cerberus, hippogriff, leviathan, centaur, Jabberwock, numen, snark, sphinx, hippocamp and 26 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
-
What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
-
A List of Mythical Proportions
All of these things exist, I swear!
unicorn, pegasus, cyclops, yeti, abominable snowman, bigfoot, phoenix, thunderbird, sea serpent, ogre, grue, troll and 138 more...
-
Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
-
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
jagosaurus's favorites
Words I like mostly because of the way they sound and feel.
ticonderoga, petulance, snark, estimable, chickahominy, feline, gezellig, gneiss, shit, willy-nilly, shelter, coda and 366 more...
-
Alles ganz verschieden
Listed various words that have come into my mind. Will edit them at some point - honestly.
dog-gold, shoulderlooker, mr. considering, the pigwoman, stevie is waiting, chingwybodganpwy, thelandscapeisstu..., couchsurfing, cappuccinodrinking, meat-eater, posher, mae rhaid i fi fynd and 581 more...
-
Fictional beasties
elf, gnome, dwarf, sprite, troll, fairy, nymph, imp, brownie, sasquatch, yeti, wookiee and 574 more...
-
Myth
augean, bacchanal, cereal, cimmerian, cupidity, cyclopean, mercurial, jovial, hermetic, halcyon, titanic, furious and 105 more...
-
Fun Words
Words that have funny meanings or are just fun to say.
kumquat, chimichanga, sarsparilla, rutabaga, rumpus, flummox, encrusted, prestidigitation, pomegranate, preposterous, dentiloquist, sepulchre and 323 more...
-
stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ogre.
yarb Ha ha. And his little ogles get the leftovers. Jan 1, 2008
sionnach That's what he would like you to believe, right up until the moment that he scoops you into his mouth, tasty morsel that you are. Dec 31, 2007
bilby Ogre is a city in central Latvia. Dec 31, 2007