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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Word of the Day for September 15, 1999
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nightmare [n. NYT-mair]
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A nightmare is a dream that arouses feelings of intense fear or
horror, or it can be any experience that is intensely distressing.
Example: "The traffic today was a real nightmare."
A nightmare used to be a creature, but it was nothing like the female
horse called a mare. In Old English, a maere was an incubus or night-
hag, a kind of evil goblin that came at night and sat on the chest of
a sleeper. The maere would press down with its weight, making it
difficult to breathe, and bad dreams would come. In French, the word
is cauchemar, where the first half is derived from caucher (to press).
In the mid-16th century, the old superstitions began to fade. Today
the frightening dream is the nightmare, and the evil incubus has been
mostly forgotten.
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