nightmare

Forms

1.A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
- I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
2.Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
- 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.

1.To experience a nightmare.
- Brother Fary of Omaha was nightmaring the rest of the night.
- Every night, Liesel would nightmare.
- 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.
2.To imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.
- Stars have no need of intimidation, which makes them mightier than all the godheads nightmared by mere humanity.
- 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.
- 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.
3.To trouble (someone or something), as by a nightmare.

Uncommon· #3553

From Middle English nyghtmare, 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.