α. see night n. and mare n.2; also 1600s (1800s U.S. regional) nightmar.
β. Middle English nyghtesmare, 1500s nightesmare.
nightmaren.adj.
/ˈnʌɪtmɛː/, U.S. /ˈnaɪtˌmɛ(ə)r/ A. n.
1. † b. As a term of abuse. Obsolete.
a. A female spirit or monster supposed to settle on and produce a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal. Also figurative. Now rare.
ΘΚΠ
the world > the supernatural > supernatural being > evil spirit or demon > [noun] > nightmare or nocturnal demon
mareeOE
nightmarec1300
witch1440
night fury1552
incubus1561
night spirit1562
hag1598
ephialtes1601
tenebrio1656
night spectre1707
nocturnal1861
witch-riding1883
c1300 St. Michael (Laud) 228 in C. Horstmann Early S.-Eng. Legendary (1887) 306 (MED) Þe luþere gostes..deriez men in heore slep..And ofte huy ouer-liggez [men], and men cleopiet þe niȝt-mare [a1325 Corpus Cambr. þe mare].
c1350 Nominale (Cambr. Ee.4.20) in Trans. Philol. Soc. (1906) 21* Wolf fox and nytmare [Fr. pesarde].
c1410 (c1390) G. Chaucer Miller's Tale (Cambr. Dd.4.24) (1902) 3485 Blisse this hous fri euery euyl wyght ffor the nyghtesmare [c1390 Hengwrt nyghtesuerye] the whȝt Pater noster.
Promptorium Parvulorum (Harl. 221) 356 Nyghte mare [v.r. Nyhtmare], Epialtes.
1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement 248/1 Nightmare, goublin.
1608 E. Topsell Hist. Serpents 173 The spirits of the night, called Incubi and Succubi, or else Night-mares.
1696 J. Aubrey Misc. (1721) 147 It is to prevent the Night-Mare (viz.) the Hag, from riding their Horses.
a1770 T. Chatterton Compl. Wks. (1971) I. 211 The dethe-owle loude dothe synge, To the nyghte-mares as heie goe.
1804 J. Collins Previous Apostrophe in Scripscrapologia p. x Let thy Pegasus then, spurn the Nightmare of Sloth, Nor by Day let her hag-ride thy Pen.
a1822 P. B. Shelley Prince Athanase in Posthumous Poems (1824) 110 Like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit Upon his being.
1851 N. Hawthorne House of Seven Gables xvi. 270 So heavy and lumpish that we can liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, which had perished..and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one.
1862 W. M. Thackeray in Cornhill Mag. Feb. 251 For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us.
1886 R. L. Stevenson Kidnapped x. 92 There was that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare.
1919 ‘K. Mansfield’ Let. 15 Nov. (1993) III. 72 Yesterday the parson came to see me from San Remo and his wife..she a grinning nightmare eating her veil as she talked.
1975 MLN 90 890 The mother of these acts, the nightmare, the succubus who comes to men while they sleep, just flashes across the Elector's mind.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > goodness and badness > inferiority or baseness > inferior person > [noun] > as abused
warlockOE
swinec1175
beastc1225
wolf's-fista1300
avetrolc1300
congeonc1300
dirtc1300
slimec1315
snipec1325
lurdanc1330
misbegetc1330
sorrowa1350
shrew1362
jordan1377
wirlingc1390
frog?a1400
warianglea1400
wretcha1400
horcop14..
turdc1400
callet1415
lotterela1450
paddock?a1475
souter1478
chuff?a1500
langbain?c1500
cockatrice1508
sow1508
spink1508
wilrone1508
rook?a1513
streaker?a1513
dirt-dauber?1518
marmoset1523
babiona1529
poll-hatcheta1529
bear-wolf1542
misbegotten1546
pig1546
excrement1561
mamzer1562
chuff-cat1563
varlet1566
toada1568
mandrake1568
spider1568
rat1571
bull-beef1573
mole-catcher1573
suppository1573
curtal1578
spider-catcher1579
mongrela1585
roita1585
stickdirta1585
dogfish1589
Poor John1589
dog's facec1590
tar-boxa1592
baboon1592
pot-hunter1592
venom1592
porcupine1594
lick-fingers1595
mouldychaps1595
tripe1595
conundrum1596
fat-guts1598
thornback1599
land-rat1600
midriff1600
stinkardc1600
Tartar1600
tumbril1601
lobster1602
pilcher1602
windfucker?1602
stinker1607
hog rubber1611
shad1612
splay-foot1612
tim1612
whit1612
verdugo1616
renegado1622
fish-facea1625
flea-trapa1625
hound's head1633
mulligrub1633
nightmare1633
toad's-guts1634
bitch-baby1638
shagamuffin1642
shit-breech1648
shitabed1653
snite1653
pissabed1672
bastard1675
swab1687
tar-barrel1695
runt1699
fat-face1740
shit-sack1769
vagabond1842
shick-shack1847
soor1848
b1851
stink-pot1854
molie1871
pig-dog1871
schweinhund1871
wind-sucker1880
fucker1893
cocksucker1894
wart1896
so-and-so1897
swine-hound1899
motherfucker1918
S.O.B.1918
twat1922
mong1926
mucker1929
basket1936
cowson1936
zombie1936
meatball1937
shower1943
chickenshit1945
mugger1945
motherferyer1946
hooer1952
morpion1954
mother1955
mother-raper1959
louser1960
effer1961
salaud1962
gunk1964
scunge1967
1633 J. Ford Broken Heart ii. iii. sig. E1v Hold your chops night mare.
1824 Ld. Byron Deformed Transformed i. i Out Thou incubus! Thou nightmare!
2.
a. Originally (usually with the): a feeling of suffocation or great distress experienced during sleep. Now usually: a bad dream producing these or similar sensations; an oppressive, frightening, or unpleasant dream.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [noun] > nightmare
bitch daughter?c1475
nightmare1562
hag1598
nightmare dream1763
daymare dream1796
night horse1840
the mind > emotion > fear > quality of inspiring fear > quality of being eerie > [noun] > nightmare or incubus
mareeOE
incubus1561
nightmare1562
1562 W. Turner Herball (1568) ii. 84 A good remedy agaynst the stranglyng of the nyght mare.
1584 T. Cogan Hauen of Health ccxli. 241 The spirites beeing stopped, the night mare (as they call it) and palsie..be engendred.
1631 D. Widdowes tr. W. A. Scribonius Nat. Philos. (new ed.) 53 The Night-mare is a seeming of being choked or strangled by one leaping upon him.
1675 N. Machiavelli Marriage Belphegor in Wks. 527 This was no fantastick imagination, nor fit of the Night-mare.
1711 J. Addison Spectator No. 117. ¶8 Moll had been often brought before him for..giving Maids the Night-Mare.
1749 D. Hartley Observ. Man i. i. §i. 52 Which seems to be the Case in the Night-mare.
1826 W. Scott Jrnl. 29 Nov. (1939) 285 I had the nightmare in short, and no wonder.
1852 H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin II. xxxix. 258 He stared at her like a man in the nightmare.
1874 L. Stephen Hours in Libr. 1st Ser. 346 He is above all things a dreamer, and his dreams resemble nightmares.
1909 Daily Chron. 18 Feb. 4/7 Nightmare, properly so-called, is..the further insanity of dreamland... A healthy bad dream, however intolerable, is a normal act of the sleeping mind; a nightmare is abnormal.
1951 ‘C. S. Forester’ Randall & River of Time (U.K. ed.) xiii. 189 He said nothing about the nightmares that still pursued him, the dreams of rotting corpses and streaming blood.
1990 D. Pallone & A. Steinberg Behind Mask i. 1 Early Tuesday morning..I thrashed in bed, trying to sleep after another nightmare.
b. figurative and in extended use. An oppressive fear; a frightening experience or thing; a source of fear or anxiety.
ΚΠ
1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus ii. iii, in Fraser's Mag. Feb. 189/2 Not till after long years..did the believing heart..sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief.
1841 C. Dickens Old Curiosity Shop i. xxix. 254 Quilp indeed was a perpetual nightmare to the child.
1872 S. W. Baker Nile Tributaries Abyssinia (new ed.) ix The night-mare of her life was the possibility that her daughter should be sold.
1909 Chambers's Jrnl. Feb. 75/2 From tip to tip of its outstretched arms this nightmare of the deep measured 56 feet.
1939 D. Thomas Let. 14 Sept. (1987) 411 The literary Left, I suppose, is having a loud whack at the Nazi nightmare.
1995 Independent 19 Oct. 7/4 (advt.) Goran was one of the first people in the former Yugoslavia to experience the nightmare of racial hatred.
c. colloquial. In weakened use: a person, thing, or situation that is very difficult or frustrating to deal with; an unpleasant or bad experience or prospect; a catalogue of disasters.
ΚΠ
1904 W. M. Stewart Diary Apr. in Railroad Mag. (1940) 68/2 Good Lord! This was a day I shall never forget. A nightmare.
1937 Amer. Home Apr. 127/2 Our present scheme, so wholly lacking in the startling modernisms of up-to-date decorating, seemed..to make our future plans sound like a painter's nightmare.
1961 H. MacLennan in Amer. Heritage Oct. 97/2 Tracking could be a nightmare.
1989 J. Trollope Village Affair v. 69 Let's find you a loo, my dear, the geography of this house is a nightmare for strangers.
2001 Mirror (Electronic ed.) 26 Mar. It's a bit of a nightmare not knowing each morning whether I'm going to be fit to play or not.
B. adj.
Having the quality of a nightmare; extremely distressing, frightening, or oppressive; nightmarish. Later in weakened use: terrible, awful, fraught with difficulty.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > fear > quality of inspiring fear > quality of being eerie > [adjective] > resembling a nightmare
nightmarea1821
nightmarish1834
nightmarey1851
nightmare-like1919
1818 T. L. Peacock (title) Nightmare Abbey.]
a1821 J. Keats Cap & Bells xxxviii, in R. M. Milnes Life, Lett. & Lit. Remains Keats (1848) II. 230 He feared less A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon, Than the Emperor when he play'd on his Man-Tiger-Organ.
1895 H. G. Wells Time Machine iv. 28 I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling.
1897 B. Stoker Dracula xxiii. 314 We waited in a suspense that made the seconds pass with nightmare slowness.
1906 J. London White Fang v. ii. 281 White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was gone.
1948 D. B. W. Lewis in R. Searle Hurrah for St. Trinian's 8 St. Trinian's, a nightmare synthesis of Roedean, Heathfield and Wycombe Abbey.
1974 National Geographic Aug. 195 The nightmare tree called rata, which begins as an innocent-seeming vine, and, in the end, strangles the tree to which it attaches itself.
2001 Evening Express (Aberdeen) (Electronic ed.) 27 Feb. Thousands more faced a nightmare journey to work today on icy and rutted roads.
Compounds
C1.
a. † nightmare sleeper n. Obsolete† nightmare-weight n. Obsolete
nightmare dream n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [noun] > nightmare
bitch daughter?c1475
nightmare1562
hag1598
nightmare dream1763
daymare dream1796
night horse1840
1763 New & Compl. Dict. Arts & Sci. (ed. 2) II. 993/1 The stomach may be oppressed by a gross internal vapour, as well as by an external weight, whence those that have the night-mare dream that a weight is laid upon them.
1830 Lady Morgan France 1829–30 I. 408 The nation..lived only in the prospect of some impending catastrophe, that might dissipate the night-mare dream, in which they were plunged.
1932 T. S. Eliot Sweeney Agonistes 30 You've had a cream of a nightmare dream.
nightmare-dreamer n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [noun] > one who dreams > has nightmares
nightmare sleeper1843
nightmare-dreamer1954
1954 A. Koestler Invisible Writing vii. 76 I am a chronic nightmare-dreamer.
1983 S. Day-Lewis in Listener 3 Feb. 15/3 All of which helped to make me..a sleep-walker, a fire-raiser, a nightmare-dreamer.
nightmare-land n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [noun] > world of > nightmare
nightmare-land1957
1957 E. Hyams Into Dream 246 For twenty-four hours he had been living in wonderland, nightmareland.
nightmare sleep n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > [noun] > an instance or period of > other specific instances
sopor1675
nightmare sleep1829
skipper1935
snore-off1950
1829 T. Carlyle in Edinb. Rev. June 457 Over our noblest faculties is spreading a nightmare sleep.
1988 R. Conquest New & Coll. Poems 108 The waters curve before our eyes The blue brightness of a knife, A seed in a nightmare sleep To organise The individual life.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [noun] > one who dreams > has nightmares
nightmare sleeper1843
nightmare-dreamer1954
1843 T. Carlyle Past & Present iv. iv. 364 Awake, O nightmare sleepers.
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > difficulty > hindrance > types or manners of hindrance > [noun] > encumberment > burdensomeness > a burden
burdenc971
chargec1300
packa1325
burnc1375
fardelc1380
weightc1380
carriagea1556
load1600
taxa1628
overpoise1697
dead weight1720
backload1725
millstone1787
tin kettle1796
nightmare-weight1847
ball and chain1855
1847 Ld. Tennyson Princess vi. 136 This nightmare weight of gratitude.
1871 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 110 622.2 We dare not speak out, and we let the monster go on, growing bigger, crushing us under his nightmare-weight.
b.
nightmare-laden adj.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > fear > quality of inspiring fear > quality of being eerie > [adjective] > full of nightmarish things
nightmare-laden1865
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [adjective] > full of or abounding in dreams > nightmares
nightmare-laden1865
nightmare-ridden1875
1865 D. Masson in Macmillan's Mag. Dec. 156 Like weird ghosts from the nightmare-laden world I had left behind me.
1993 Calgary (Alberta) Herald (Nexis) 21 Jan. b1 She feels blessed to manage four hours of nightmare-laden sleep at a stretch.
nightmare-ridden adj.
ΘΚΠ
the world > physical sensation > sleeping and waking > sleep > dream > [adjective] > full of or abounding in dreams > nightmares
nightmare-laden1865
nightmare-ridden1875
1875 Cornhill Mag. 31 55 The vast unsettled populations of medieval Europe, haunted with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by imperious religious yearnings.
1961 Times 10 Nov. 18/7 Schoenberg's nightmare-ridden territory.
C2.
a.
nightmare scenario n. the worst of a range of options or contingencies.
ΚΠ
1971 N.Y. Times 6 Aug. 31 Such is the nightmare scenario alarming many capitals.
1974 Polit. Sci. Q. 94 88 Here, between 1951 and 1954, the nightmare scenario of American policymakers seemed to be playing itself out.
1982 Time (Nexis) 4 Jan. 38 Few nightmare scenarios for World War III are more plausible than one in which the opening scene is a border conflict between the U.S.S.R. and China.
2001 Boston Globe (Nexis) 1 Jan. a15 A nightmare scenario would be the formation of a vast terrorist coalition with ‘diverse anti-Western objectives and access to chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons’.
b. Similarly with other nouns.
ΚΠ
1991 Times 18 Feb. 3/5 That was called the nightmare option before this war began, and it is still a nightmare option.
1994 Evening Standard (Nexis) 5 July 2 Failure could then see the nightmare alternative of the Bosnian Moslem-Croat Federation left to fight it out with the Serbs.
2000 Evening Standard (Nexis) 18 Feb. 1 This would leave Mr Blair with the nightmare option of supporting a dissident Leftwing MP.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
nightmarev.
/ˈnʌɪtmɛː/, U.S. /ˈnaɪtˌmɛ(ə)r/ 1. transitive. To trouble or oppress, as by a nightmare. Also figurative.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > suffering > state of being harassed > harass [verb (transitive)] > as by an evil sprit
obsess1531
hag-ride1648
nightmare1660
1660 R. Wild Iter Boreale 3 Hag of my Fancy,..Nightmare my soul no more.
a1678 A. Marvell Britannia v Raleigh in Coll. Poems (1969) I. 234 Thus the State's nightmared by this hellish rout.
1875 H. Ellison Stones from Quarry 75 Thy ledger 'neath thy head dost lay For pillow, nightmared with dreams of thy hoards.
1998 Santa Fe New Mexican (Nexis) 4 Oct. f6 Democrats, nightmared by hordes of Navajo Indians registering Republican, are preparing to meet the threat.
2. transitive. To imagine (a thing) as in a nightmare. Also intransitive: to have a nightmare.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > perception or cognition > faculty of imagination > imagine or visualize [verb (transitive)] > as in a nightmare
nightmare1839
1839 Lady Lytton Cheveley (ed. 2) I. xii. 269 The obscene trash and inconceivable horrors that are hourly night-mared in French garrets.
1987 National Law Jrnl. (Nexis) 26 Oct. 27 I dozed off and dreamed. Actually, I nightmared.
1998 D. Baldacci Simple Truth x. 70 Half were still at work, the rest in bed, nightmaring through a list of uncompleted tasks of national importance.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.c1300
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