nightmare

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A very unpleasant or frightening dream.

   • I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
2. 2

   Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety,…

   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.
   • The Red Holocaust is best interpreted in this light as the bitter fruit of an^([sic]) utopian gambit that was socially misengineered into a dystopic nightmare by despots in humanitarian disguise.
3. 3

   A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of…

   A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.

   • It haunted me, however, more than once, like a night-mare.
   • I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight—an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—incumbent eternally upon my heart!
4. ›+ 4 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep

      A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis.

      • The Night-mare generally ſeizes people ſleeping on their backs, and often begins with frightful dreams, which are ſoon ſucceeded by a difficult reſpiration, a violent oppreſſion on the breaſt, and a total privation of voluntary motion.
      • Had been afflicted in the night with that strange complaint called the nightmare.
   2. 5

      To experience a nightmare.

      • Brother Fary of Omaha was nightmaring the rest of the night.
      • It’s been 21,900 hours, 912 days, 130 Saturday nights, 30 months, 3 years since October 16, 1988 when I was stunned awake, straddled by a man I did not know. First I think I’m nightmaring.
      • Every night, Liesel would nightmare.
   3. 6

      To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.

      • She was the last person I’d expected to see, although I had not expected to see anyone at all. For a moment I thought it was a nightmare, and that I was nightmaring the whole thing.
      • Stars have no need of intimidation, which makes them mightier than all the godheads nightmared by mere humanity.
      • I hurried through the arch, was dipped into shadow, and was glad to have my screaming eyes rinsed clean of this vision of a scrabbling, gibbering hell, worse than any nightmared by Bosch or Goya.
   4. 7

      To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.

      • THe day is broke! Melpomene, be gone; / Hag of my Fancy, let me now alone: / Night-mare my ſoul no more; Go take thy flight / Where Traytors Ghoſts keep an eternal night; […]
      • Thou things imponderable dost price and weigh / By scales untrue ’gainst the gewgaws and gauds / O’ the World; thy ledger ’neath thy head dost lay / For pillow, nightmared with dreams of thy hoards.

The neighborhood

• neighbornight terror
• neighborsleep paralysis