Lexic.us

Definition of Nightmare

1. Noun. A situation resembling a terrifying dream.

Definition of Nightmare

1. n. A fiend or incubus formerly supposed to cause trouble in sleep.

Definition of Nightmare

1. Noun. (rare) A female demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep. ¹

2. Noun. A very bad or frightening dream. ¹

3. Noun. (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Nightmare

1. [n -S]

Medical Definition of Nightmare

1. 1. A fiend or incubus formerly supposed to cause trouble in sleep. 2. A condition in sleep usually caused by improper eating or by digestive or nervous troubles, and characterised by a sense of extreme uneasiness or discomfort (as of weight on the chest or stomach, impossibility of motion or speech, etc), or by frightful or oppressive dreams, from which one wakes after extreme anxiety, in a troubled state of mind; incubus. 3. Hence, any overwhelming, oppressive, or stupefying influence. Origin: Night + mare incubus. See Mare incubus. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Nightmare

Literary usage of Nightmare

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. The American Journal of Psychology by Granville Stanley Hall, Edward Bradford Titchener (1908)
"The "nightmare has been a very fertile source of mythology and folk-lore. ... The Latin term for nightmare, incubus, from incubare, "to lie down upon," ..."

2. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Giving the Derivation, Source, Or Origin of by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1898)
"Nightmare (/}). Л sensation in sleep as if something heavy were sitting on pur breast. (Anglo-Saxon, тага, an incubus.) This sensation is called in French ..."

3. The French Romanticists: An Anthology of Verse and Prose by Hugh Fraser Stewart (1914)
"... for whom Nodier had an unbounded admiration. For C. Nodier see A'. M. p. 59. l. 22. Smarra is the Slavonic for nightmare. The speaker is one Polemon. ..."

4. Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities by Shearjashub Spooner (1865)
"Soon after his return to England, Fuseli painted his " Nightmare," which was ... This picture was a work of far higher order than his " Nightmare," although ..."

5. Psychology; Or, The Science of Mind by Oliver S. Munsell (1880)
"Nightmare. Nightmare seems to be only a peculiar and distressing form of dreaming, dependent upon congestion or stoppage of the circulation of the blood. ..."

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