nightmare.
A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
Meaning & usage
A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
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.
A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.
A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis.
Where this word comes from
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.
To experience a nightmare.
To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.
Where this word comes from
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, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.