Brewer's: O'gres

of nursery mythology are giants of very malignant dispositions, who live on human flesh. It is an Eastern invention, and the word is derived from the Ogurs, a desperately savage horde of Asia, who overran part of Europe in the fifth century. Others derived it from Orcus, the ugly, cruel man-eating monster so familiar to readers of Bojardo and Ariosto. The female is Ogress.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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