nightmare
UK /ˈnaɪt.mɛə/ · US /ˈnaɪt.mɛɚ/ noun, verb
Forms nightmares nightmaring nightmared night-mare
- noun A very unpleasant or frightening dream. “I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.”
- noun (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure. “Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.”
- noun (now rare) A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.
- noun (now chiefly historical) A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis.
- verb (intransitive) To experience a nightmare.
- verb (transitive) To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
- verb (transitive) To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English nyghtmare, from Old English *nihtmare, equivalent to night + mare (“evil spirit believed to afflict a sleeping person”). Cognate with Scots nichtmare and nichtmeer, Dutch nachtmerrie, Middle Low German nachtmār, German Nachtmahr.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A fiend or incubus formerly supposed to cause trouble in sleep.
- noun A condition in sleep usually caused by improper eating or by digestive or nervous troubles, and characterized by a sense of extreme uneasiness or discomfort (as of weight on the chest or stomach, impossibility of motion or speech, etc.), or by frightful or oppressive dreams, from which one wakes after extreme anxiety, in a troubled state of mind; incubus. Dunglison.
Etymology [Night + mare incubus. See Mare incubus.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “nightmare”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details