A despot is someone who holds great power and uses it in a cruel and unfair way — most often a ruler. Under a despot, one person decides, people cannot safely disagree, and punishment can be harsh. In careful talk this is a political word, a little more literary than dictator, though people use the two in overlapping ways. Though actually, the older Greek word just meant “lord” or “master,” not “cruel king”; the dark meaning grew later in European writing about rulers who kept all the power and treated people badly. People also stretch despot in ordinary life, half in joke, for a boss, a teacher, or a family member who orders everyone around. That stretch is dramatic: it borrows the cruelty of the political word to complain about someone bossy. The core picture remains a person, usually a ruler, not the system itself.