nightmare

n. 恶梦；梦魇般的经历

adj. 可怕的；噩梦似的

中文词源

nightmare 噩梦

night,夜晚，mare,女妖精，梦淫妖，词源同murder.原指夜间与男人交媾的女妖，使人窒息和虚脱，后引申词义噩梦。

nightmare: nightmare: [13] The mare of nightmare is not the same word as mare ‘female horse’. It comes from Old English mære, which denoted a sort of evil spirit or goblin which sat on sleepers’ chests and gave them bad dreams. That is what the compound nightmare meant too when it emerged in the early Middle English period, and the metaphorical application to the bad dream supposedly caused by this incubus is not recorded until the mid-16th century.
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nightmare (n.): late 13c., "an evil female spirit afflicting sleepers with a feeling of suffocation," compounded from night + mare (3) "goblin that causes nightmares, incubus." Meaning shifted mid-16c. from the incubus to the suffocating sensation it causes. Sense of "any bad dream" first recorded 1829; that of "very distressing experience" is from 1831. Cognate with Middle Dutch nachtmare, German Nachtmahr.

1. 晚上睡觉时梦见一匹母马在你边上，这就是噩梦，因为人家梦到的都是美女，而你梦到的母马。2. nightmare ――在晚上梦见了母马向你扑来一定是恶梦 n.恶梦；经常的恐惧

2. In practice a graduate tax is an administrative nightmare.: 毕业税具体操作起来不啻一场行政噩梦。

3. His abrasive wit and caustic comments were an interviewer's nightmare.: 他睿智刁钻，评论尖刻，对任何采访他的人而言都是梦魇。

4. They began to recover slowly from their nightmare of pain and suffering.: 他们开始从痛苦的梦魇中慢慢恢复过来。

5. Discovering your child takes drugs is a nightmare scenario for most parents.: 对大多数父母来说，发现自己的孩子吸毒简直就是场噩梦。