cauchemar.
nightmare
Meaning & usage
nightmare
Je n'ai pas pu dormir hier soir parce que j'ai fait trop de cauchemars.
C'était un rêve ou un cauchemar?
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle French cauchemare, from Old French cauquemare. By surface analysis, cauque + mar. Compare Walloon tchôcmwår. * First element from Old French cauche, from the verb chauchier (“to press”), from Latin calcare (“to trample, tread on”), from calx (“heel”), of uncertain origin. * Second element from Frankish *marā (“evil spirit”), from Proto-West Germanic *marā, from Proto-Germanic *marǭ (“nightmare, incubus”), from Proto-Indo-European *mor- (“malicious female spirit”), from *mer- (“to die”); related to the homograph English mare. More at mare.
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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.