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nightmare

Pronunciation: /ˈnaɪt.mɛə/

The English word “nightmare” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
  2. Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
  3. A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.
  4. A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis.

verb

  1. To experience a nightmare.
  2. To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
  3. To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.