nightmare
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈnaɪt.mɛə/
ipa: /ˈnaɪt.mɛɚ/
ipa: [nʌɪʔ.mɛəɹ]
Forms: form: nightmares
form: nightmaring
form: nightmared
form: nightmared
form: night-mare
Etymology: From Middle English night-mare, from Old English *nihtmare, equivalent to night + mare (“evil spirit believed to afflict a sleeping person”). Cognate with Scots nichtmare and nichtmeer, Dutch nachtmerrie, Middle Low German nachtmār, German Nachtmahr.
Senses: examples: text: Brother Fary of Omaha was nightmaring the rest of the night.
ref: 1931, The Sleeping Car Conductor, page 16:
text: It’s been 21,900 hours, 912 days, 130 Saturday nights, 30 months, 3 years since October 16, 1988 when I was stunned awake, straddled by a man I did not know. First I think I’m nightmaring.
ref: 1998, Andrea Benton Rushing, “Surviving Rape: A Morning/Mourning Ritual”, in Mary E. Odem, Jody Clay-Warner, editors, Confronting Rape and Sexual Assault (Worlds of Women; number 3), SR Books, published 2003, →ISBN, page 6:
text: Every night, Liesel would nightmare.
ref: 2006, Markus Zusak, “The Woman with the Iron Fist”, in The Book Thief, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 36:
text: He must be imagining that behind the rain of leaves was a dark-haired man sitting in his chair, smiling away. He must be so fed up with himself that he was nightmaring while awake.
ref: 2011, Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl, Grand Central Publishing, published 2012, →ISBN:
glosses: To experience a nightmare.
examples: text: She was the last person I’d expected to see, although I had not expected to see anyone at all. For a moment I thought it was a nightmare, and that I was nightmaring the whole thing.
ref: 1983, Shirley Eskapa, chapter 16, in The Secret-Keeper, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 99:
text: Stars have no need of intimidation, which makes them mightier than all the godheads nightmared by mere humanity.
ref: 2013, Caitlín R[ebekah] Kiernan, “Random Thoughts Before a Fatal Crash”, in The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories, Burton, Mich.: Subterranean Press, →ISBN, page 224:
text: I hurried through the arch, was dipped into shadow, and was glad to have my screaming eyes rinsed clean of this vision of a scrabbling, gibbering hell, worse than any nightmared by Bosch or Goya.
ref: 2016, Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch; Volume Two: Empire Decayed, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster BFYR, →ISBN, page 122:
glosses: To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
examples: text: THe day is broke! Melpomene, be gone; / Hag of my Fancy, let me now alone: / Night-mare my ſoul no more; Go take thy flight / Where Traytors Ghoſts keep an eternal night; […]
ref: 1660 April 23, a Rural Pen [pseudonym; Robert Wild], Iter Boreale. Attempting Somthing upon the Successful and Matchless March of the Lord General George Monck, from Scotland, to London, the Last Winter, &c., London: […], page 3:
text: Thou things imponderable dost price and weigh / By scales untrue ’gainst the gewgaws and gauds / O’ the World; thy ledger ’neath thy head dost lay / For pillow, nightmared with dreams of thy hoards.
ref: [1875], Henry Browne [pseudonym; Henry Ellison], “To England”, in Stones from the Quarry; or, Moods of Mind, London: Provost and Co., […], page 308:
text: And in my sleep a vision nightmared me:— / The steeds I tended, and at Rhesus’ side / Drave in the car, I saw as in a dream / Mounted of wolves that rode upon their backs; / And with their tails these lashed the horses’ flanks, / Scourging them on.
ref: 1898, Euripides, translated by Arthur S[anders] Way, “Rhesus”, in The Tragedies of Euripides in English Verse. […], volume III, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited; New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Co., page 484, lines 780–785:
text: […] I slept fitfully—it was hot, the very pillows seemed to sweat—and when I did fall off in sleep, I tossed and tossed, disturbed, I think, by the call of old-new affinities, nightmared by the tall Sudanese who paced my dreams, veiled in a yashmak, stuttering.
ref: 1951, A[braham] M[oses] Klein, The Second Scroll, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →OCLC, page 66:
text: The thing beckoned to me, grinning horrible out of its gape-agog slit-face, and it whispered to me, about things that I . . . well, never you mind that part. / “It was that powder, I tell you, as was nightmaring me. So I took the jar out behind-house and I dropped it down the convenience. Yes, the earth-closet. I went back to bed, but I still couldn’t kip much.
ref: 1994, F[ergus] Gwynplaine MacIntyre, The Woman Between the Worlds, New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing, →ISBN, page 208:
glosses: To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.
Related terms: night terror
sleep paralysis