nightmare
噩梦,恶梦,梦魇,寎月
Related Words
Definitions
- 1
- : a terrifying dream in which the dreamer experiences feelings of helplessness, extreme anxiety, sorrow, etc.
- : a condition, thought, or experience suggestive of a nightmare: the nightmare of his years in prison.
- : a monster or evil spirit believed to oppress persons during sleep.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Where does the word nightmare come from?
Nightmares are scary and unpleasant. But you can rest easy knowing that the fascinating origin of the word nightmare makes it clear humans have been having them for hundreds of years.In Old English, a mare was a kind of evil or cursed spirit. Mares appear in all kinds of folklore, including German and Slavic stories. Mares were said to ride on people’s chests at night, causing suffocation and bad dreams. These mares, often female, were known as nightmares.By the 16th century, the word nightmare came to refer to a sensation of suffocation or anxiety during sleep, and now simply a bad dream. While nightmares are terrifying, there is good news: at least most of us don’t worry about evil spirits trying to suffocate us in our sleep anymore.The roots of these other words may get a rise—of laughter or surprise—out of you. Run on over to our roundup of them at “Weird Word Origins That Will Make Your Family Laugh.”
Examples
This is a nightmare for the thief, because they have to decide how much time and risk they want to devote to the job.
Burleson is widely credited with establishing the “zone system” to determine mail costs, while DeJoy has been praised for his logistics-oriented approach by those who see the postal service as a money-losing bureaucratic nightmare.
We gave them a bunch of different scenarios and asked them to weight which were most likely to bring about their nightmares.
The league denied Delle Donne a high-risk exemption, despite her Lyme disease, which triggered a PR nightmare for the WNBA, but the Mystics said this week she will still be paid her full salary.
The latest indication came from county supervisor candidate Nora Vargas, who posted on Facebook Thursday a nightmare story of her attempts to get tested for the virus due to exposure she experienced in the course of her campaign.
You know, I feel the same way about that that I do about The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Uber responded to the PR nightmare by reversing the surge, refunding those affected, and doling out free rides.
For Jane Doe though, she was heading into yet another nightmare.
The path may be there, but current travelers to Sudan face a bureaucratic nightmare of permits and road blocks.
His lone stable was a girl from Newport News, Virginia, who had already escaped one nightmare.
As men fixed in the grip of , we were powerless—unable to do anything but wait.