▪ 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.
| c 1290 S. Eng. Leg. I. 306/228 Ofte huy ouer-liggez [men]: and men cleopiet þe niȝt-mare. c 1340 Nominale (Skeat) 701 Wolf, fox, and nytmare [F. pesarde]. c 1440 Promp. Parv. 356/1 Nyghte Mare (or mare, or wytche), epialtes. 1530 Palsgr. 248/1 Nightmare, goublin. 1561 Chaucer's Miller's T. C.'s Wks. (Speght) 13 Jesu Crist, and seint Benedight, Blisse this house..Fro the nightes-mare. 1608 Topsell Serpents (1658) 715 The spirits of the night, called Incubi and Succubi, or else Night-mares. 1696 Aubrey Misc. (1721) 147 It is to prevent the Night-Mare (viz.) the Hag, from riding their Horses. 1769 Chatterton ælla cvi, The death-owl loud doth sing To the night-mares as they go. 1817 Shelley Pr. Athan. i. 120 Like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit Upon his being. 1842 Tennyson Morte d'Arthur 177 King Arthur panted hard Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed. |
| fig. 1860 Thackeray Round. Papers, On half a loaf, For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. |
b. As a term of abuse.
rare.
| 1633 Ford Broken H. ii. iii, Hold your chops, nightmare! 1824 Byron 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.
| 1562 Turner Herbal ii. (1568) 84 A good remedy agaynst the stranglyng of the nyght mare. 1584 Cogan Haven Health ccxli. (1636) 274 The spirits being stopped, the night mare (as they call it) and palsie..be engendred. 1631 Widdowes Nat. Philos. 53 The Night-mare is a seeming of being choked or strangled by one leaping upon him. 1675 Machiavelli's Belphegor Wks. 527 This was no fantastick imagination, nor fit of the Night-mare. 1711 Addison Spectator No. 117 ¶8 Moll had been often brought before him for..giving Maids the Night-Mare. 1748 Hartley Observ. Man i. i. §i. 52 Which seems to be the Case in the Night-mare. 1826 Scott Jrnl. 29 Nov., I had the night⁓mare in short, and no wonder. 1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Tom's C. xxxix, He stared at her like a man in the night⁓mare. 1874 L. 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.
| 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. (1858) 71 Not till after long years..did the believing heart..sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief. 1840 Dickens Old C. Shop xxix, Quilp indeed was a perpetual night-mare to the child. 1872 Baker Nile Trib. 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. 1956 A. L. Rowse Early Churchills 32 A great deal of genuine learning is displayed, a nightmare of authorities cited in the Elizabethan fashion. 1975 M. 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.| 1856 Delamer Fl. Gard. (1861) 169 You may plant in safety, without *nightmare dreams of nipping frosts. |
| 1954 Koestler Invisible Writing vii. 76, I am a chronic *nightmare-dreamer. |
| 1865 Macm. Mag. XIII. 156 Like weird ghosts from the *nightmare-laden world I had left behind me. |
| 1957 E. Hyams Into Dream 246 For twenty-four hours he had been living in wonderland, *nightmareland. |
| 1847 J. 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. 1919 Wodehouse Damsel in Distress xv. 176 This blister had become the one great Fact in an unreal nightmare-like universe. |
| 1926 C. Plumb in Oxford Poetry 36 Plagued, *nightmare-ridden by a million lusts. 1961 Times 10 Nov. 18/7 Schoenberg's nightmare-ridden territory. |
| 1829 Carlyle Misc. II. (1857) 116 Over our noblest faculties is spreading a *nightmare sleep. |
| 1843 ― Past & Pr. (1858) 282 Awake, O *nightmare sleepers. |
| 1847 Tennyson 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.| 1660 R. Wilde Iter Boreale 3 Hag of my Fancy,..Nightmare my soul no more. a 1678 Marvell Poems (1870) 136 Thus the State's nightmared by this hellish rout. 1856 R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) II. x. i. 154 Now she sat nightmared in company, nervous, stiff, and silent, the picture of stupidity. 1893 Leland Mem. I. 110 The nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy. |
2. To imagine as in a nightmare.
| 1839 Lady Lytton Cheveley (ed. 2) I. xii. 269 The obscene trash and inconceivable horrors that are hourly night-mared in French garrets. |