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nightmare

UK/ˈnaɪt.mɛə/US/ˈnaɪt.mɛɚ/
nounB12 meaningsVery common — you will meet it every day · #1,391 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: nightmares

A nightmare is a frightening dream that wakes you with a start. A bad nightmare, wake from a nightmare, a nightmare journey.

They happen in REM sleep, mostly in the second half of the night, and they are remembered where night terrors are not. Figuratively a nightmare is any awful experience — a nightmare journey, an absolute nightmare — which is now the commoner use by far. Note that the mare in nightmare is not a horse but an Old English word for a crushing goblin.

Tulip Hysteria / Go to albums · CC BY 2.5

Definitions of nightmare

  1. 1nounnightmareA frightening dream that wakes you.B1

    “The child woke up screaming after a nightmare about monsters.”

  2. 2nounawfulAny awful experience.B1

    “The drive home in the snow was a nightmare.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

nightmare is a bad dream or ordeal.

Also accepted in games: bad dream

Where it comes from

Old English nihtmare is night plus mare, an evil spirit believed to sit on a sleeper's chest. The mare here has nothing to do with the horse.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *mer-

  2. Old English

    *nihtmare

  3. Middle English

    nyghtmare

  4. English, today

    nightmare

From Middle English nyghtmare, from Old English nihtmare, equivalent to night + [[mare. Cognate with Scots nichtmare and nichtmeer, Dutch nachtmerrie, Middle Low German nachtmār, German Nachtmahr.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Big Ideas

Practise this word

nightmare in the wild

  • After a nightmare, a person will often awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a short period of time.

    Nightmare

  • Recurrent nightmares may require medical help, as they can interfere with sleeping patterns and cause insomnia.

    Nightmare

  • The difference is that after a sleep terror episode, the patient wakes up with more dramatic symptoms than with a nightmare disorder, such as screaming and crying.

    Nightmare disorder

  • Furthermore, they do not remember the reason of the fear, while a patient with a nightmare disorder remembers every detail of the dream.

    Nightmare disorder

  • Organizations called the news a "devastating blow" and a "nightmare scenario" given the country's already dire humanitarian situation.

    COVID-19 pandemic in Yemen

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.