Definition of "bugbear"

Stone ballast is now used throughout the main line, and has the additional advantage of eliminating the previous bugbear of dust.

1940 November, O. S. M. Raw, “The Rhodesia Railways—I”, in Railway Magazine, page 592

Level crossings are the bugbear of railway operation at Hull. There are no fewer than 16 within the city boundary.

1962 January, “Talking of Trains: Hull's level crossing problem”, in Modern Railways, page 10

Next, they operate in constrained worlds. Apple is a particular bugbear for Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Sweeney.

2021 December 18, “The billionaire battle for the metaverse”, in The Economist‎

What has this Bugbear Death to frighten Man, / If Souls can die, as well as Bodies can?

1709, John Dryden, "Lucretius: A Poem against the Fear of Death" (lines 1-2), published in a pamphlet of the same name with an Ode in Memory of Mrs. Ann Killebrew

But, to the world no bugbear is so greatAs want of figure and a small estate.

1738, Alexander Pope, Epistle I of the First Book of Horace; to Lord Bolingbroke

What have I done to be made a bugbear of, and to be shunned and dreaded as if I brought the plague?

1840 April – 1841 November, Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop. A Tale. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1841

Ha, ha: alas poore wretch: a poore Chipochia, haſt not ſlept to night? would he not (a naughty man) let it ſleepe: a bug-beare take him.

c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii]

“How could you lie so glaringly as to affirm I hated the ‘poor child’? and invent bugbear stories to terrify her from my door-stones? […] ”

1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter XXII, in Wuthering Heights, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […]

"My young friends," quietly replied Jason, "I do not wonder that you think the dragon very terrible. You have grown up from infancy in the fear of this monster, and therefore still regard him with the awe that children feel for the bugbears and hobgoblins which their nurses have talked to them about. […] "

1853, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Golden Fleece”, in Tanglewood Tales‎

The partisans of the Administration object to the word “imperialism,” calling it a mere bugbear having no real existence.

1900, Carl Schurz, For Truth, Justice and Liberty