| 释义 |
▪ I. nightmare, n.|ˈnaɪtmɛə(r)|
Also 6 nightesmare.
[f. night n. + mare n.2 Cf. MDu. nachtmare, -maere, -mer(i)e, etc. (Du. -merrie), MLG. nachtmar, -maer (LG. -moor), MHG. nahtmare (G. nachtmahr, -mähr): some of these forms show assimilation to mare n.1]
1. a. A female spirit or monster supposed to beset people and animals by night, settling upon them when they are asleep and producing a feeling of suffocation by its weight.
c1290S. Eng. Leg. I. 306/228 Ofte huy ouer-liggez [men]: and men cleopiet þe niȝt-mare. c1340Nominale (Skeat) 701 Wolf, fox, and nytmare [F. pesarde]. c1440Promp. Parv. 356/1 Nyghte Mare (or mare, or wytche), epialtes. 1530Palsgr. 248/1 Nightmare, goublin. 1561Chaucer's Miller's T. C.'s Wks. (Speght) 13 Jesu Crist, and seint Benedight, Blisse this house..Fro the nightes-mare. 1608Topsell Serpents (1658) 715 The spirits of the night, called Incubi and Succubi, or else Night-mares. 1696Aubrey Misc. (1721) 147 It is to prevent the Night-Mare (viz.) the Hag, from riding their Horses. 1769Chatterton ælla cvi, The death-owl loud doth sing To the night-mares as they go. 1817Shelley Pr. Athan. i. 120 Like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit Upon his being. 1842Tennyson Morte d'Arthur 177 King Arthur panted hard Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed.
fig.1860Thackeray Round. Papers, On half a loaf, For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us.
b. As a term of abuse. rare.
1633Ford Broken H. ii. iii, Hold your chops, nightmare! 1824Byron Def. Transf. i. i, Out Thou incubus! Thou nightmare!
2. a. A feeling of suffocation or great distress felt during sleep, from which the sleeper vainly endeavours to free himself; a bad dream producing these or similar sensations.
1562Turner Herbal ii. (1568) 84 A good remedy agaynst the stranglyng of the nyght mare. 1584Cogan Haven Health ccxli. (1636) 274 The spirits being stopped, the night mare (as they call it) and palsie..be engendred. 1631Widdowes Nat. Philos. 53 The Night-mare is a seeming of being choked or strangled by one leaping upon him. 1675Machiavelli's Belphegor Wks. 527 This was no fantastick imagination, nor fit of the Night-mare. 1711Addison Spectator No. 117 ⁋8 Moll had been often brought before him for..giving Maids the Night-Mare. 1748Hartley Observ. Man i. i. §i. 52 Which seems to be the Case in the Night-mare. 1826Scott Jrnl. 29 Nov., I had the night⁓mare in short, and no wonder. 1852Mrs. Stowe Uncle Tom's C. xxxix, He stared at her like a man in the night⁓mare. 1874L. Stephen Hours in Library (1892) I. vi. 234 He is above all things a dreamer, and his dreams resemble nightmares.
b. In fig. and transf. senses.
1831Carlyle Sart. Res. (1858) 71 Not till after long years..did the believing heart..sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief. 1840Dickens Old C. Shop xxix, Quilp indeed was a perpetual night-mare to the child. 1872Baker Nile Trib. ix, The night-mare of her life was the possibility that her daughter should be sold. 1909Chambers's Jrnl. Feb. 75/2 From tip to tip of its outstretched arms this nightmare of the deep measured 56 feet. 1956A. L. Rowse Early Churchills 32 A great deal of genuine learning is displayed, a nightmare of authorities cited in the Elizabethan fashion. 1975M. Babson There must be some Mistake xiii. 100 ‘It's a nightmare,’ Karen agreed. ‘..I wake up and it's still there.’
3. attrib. and Comb., as nightmare-dream, nightmare-dreamer, nightmare-land, nightmare-sleep, nightmare-sleeper, nightmare-weight. Also nightmare-laden, nightmare-ridden adjs.; nightmare-like adj. and adv.
1856Delamer Fl. Gard. (1861) 169 You may plant in safety, without *nightmare dreams of nipping frosts.
1954Koestler Invisible Writing vii. 76, I am a chronic *nightmare-dreamer.
1865Macm. Mag. XIII. 156 Like weird ghosts from the *nightmare-laden world I had left behind me.
1957E. Hyams Into Dream 246 For twenty-four hours he had been living in wonderland, *nightmareland.
1847J. R. Lowell Let. from Boston in Pennsylvania Freeman 1 Jan. 3/3 His words burn as with iron-searers, And *nightmare-like he mounts his hearers. 1919Wodehouse Damsel in Distress xv. 176 This blister had become the one great Fact in an unreal nightmare-like universe.
1926C. Plumb in Oxford Poetry 36 Plagued, *nightmare-ridden by a million lusts. 1961Times 10 Nov. 18/7 Schoenberg's nightmare-ridden territory.
1829Carlyle Misc. II. (1857) 116 Over our noblest faculties is spreading a *nightmare sleep.
1843― Past & Pr. (1858) 282 Awake, O *nightmare sleepers.
1847Tennyson Princ. vi. 281 This *nightmare weight of gratitude.
▪ II. ˈnightmare, v.
[f. the n.]
1. trans. To beset as by a nightmare. Also fig. Hence ˈnightmared ppl. a.
1660R. Wilde Iter Boreale 3 Hag of my Fancy,..Nightmare my soul no more. a1678Marvell Poems (1870) 136 Thus the State's nightmared by this hellish rout. 1856R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) II. x. i. 154 Now she sat nightmared in company, nervous, stiff, and silent, the picture of stupidity. 1893Leland Mem. I. 110 The nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy.
2. To imagine as in a nightmare.
1839Lady Lytton Cheveley (ed. 2) I. xii. 269 The obscene trash and inconceivable horrors that are hourly night-mared in French garrets. |