Nightmare

Quick meaning: Nightmare is a noun meaning A very unpleasant or frightening dream.

Meaning

A very unpleasant or frightening dream.

More Meanings

1. (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
2. (now rare) A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.
3. (now chiefly historical) A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis.
4. (intransitive) To experience a nightmare.
5. (transitive) To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
6. (transitive) To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.

Example Sentences

It haunted me, however, more than once, like a night-mare.

I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.

Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.

The Red Holocaust is best interpreted in this light as the bitter fruit of an^([sic]) utopian gambit that was socially misengineered into a dystopic nightmare by despots in humanitarian disguise.

Word Forms

• nightmares
• night-mare
• nightmaring
• nightmared

Synonyms for nightmare

Depending on context, synonyms include incubus, succubus.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include incubus, oneirodynia, horror, ordeal, misery, bane.

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