Other forms: tyrants
A tyrant is a ruler who governs cruelly and without limit. A brutal tyrant, overthrow the tyrant, the tyrant fell.
It is used of anybody who rules harshly, from a dictator to a departmental head. In ancient Greece a tyrant was simply somebody who seized power outside the normal succession, with no implication of cruelty, and some were popular. Note tyranny, tyrannical; and Tyrannosaurus, which means tyrant lizard and was named to convey exactly the modern sense rather than the Greek one.
1nountyrantA ruler who governs cruelly and without limit.
“The people finally rose up against the tyrant who had jailed his critics.”
tyrant is a cruel ruler.
Greek tyrannos meant a ruler who took power rather than inheriting it, and was neutral. Cruelty was read into the word by Athenians who disliked the men who did it, and English inherited only their opinion.
Ancient Greek
τύραννος — usurper, monarch, despot
Latin
tyrannus — despot
Old French
tyrant
Middle English
tyraunt
English, today
tyrant
From Middle English tyraunt, tiraunt, tyrant, tyrante, from Old French tyrant, from the addition of a terminal -t to tiran (cp. French tyran) via a back-formation related to the development of French present participles out of the Latin -ans form, from Latin tyrannus (“despot”), from Ancient Greek τύραννος (“usurper, monarch, despot”), of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA