Nightmare Meaning
/ˈnaɪt.mɛə/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA very unpleasant or frightening dream.
nounAny bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
Sentence Examples
I had a nightmare.
I feel as if I've woken up from a nightmare.
CEFR Practice Quiz
After eating spoiled food, he had a terrible ____ about being chased by monsters.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Finding my way through the complicated maze turned out to be a real ____.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"If Euston is not typically English, St. Pancras is. Its façade is a nightmare of improbable Gothic. It is fairly plastered with the aesthetic ideals of 1868, and the only beautiful thing about it is Barlow's roof. It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost. Yet there is something about the ordered whole of St. Pancras that would make demolition a terrible pity."
— 1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358:
"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."
— 2009, Steven Rosefielde, Red Holocaust, page 240:
"It haunted me, however, more than once, like a night-mare."
— 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter II, in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 46:
"They plague and annoy lazy men-servants and untidy maids with frightful dreams; oppress them as the nightmare; bite them as fleas; and scratch and tear them like cats and dogs; and often in the night frighten, in the shape of owls, thieves and lovers, or, like Will-o-the-wisps, lead them astray into bogs and marshes, and perhaps up to those who are in pursuit of them."
— 1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 283:
"I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight—an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—incumbent eternally upon my heart!"
— 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
After eating spoiled food, he had a terrible ____ about being chased by monsters.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Finding my way through the complicated maze turned out to be a real ____.