Simon Legree

American  

[li-gree] / lɪˈgri /

noun

1. the brutal plantation owner in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin who abuses and murders several enslaved people.

2. any harsh, merciless master.

   Our math teacher is a Simon Legree.

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Legree, Simon Cultural  

1. The cruel overseer and owner of slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Though the book describes conditions in the slaveholding states of the South, Legree, the most vicious character in it, is from New England.

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Example Sentences

Samuel Pinchard, the plantation owner, is a literary descendant of Simon Legree, but Jeffers has drawn him in the full height of psychological complexity.

From Washington Post • Aug. 23, 2021

I’ll detail how Wiencek arrives at his bizarre proof of a Jefferson who suddenly becomes Simon Legree, but I should say up front that this book fails as a work of scholarship.

From Slate • Oct. 19, 2012

Poe's foster father, who comports himself like Simon Legree with a Scotch burr, sends him away.

From Time Magazine Archive

Please do not print any more articles making her a feminine Simon Legree.

From Time Magazine Archive

Men and women read it, talked about it, cried over the death of Little Eva and of Uncle Tom, shuddered at the cruelty of Simon Legree.

From "Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Ann Petry