different between nightmare vs incubus

English

Alternative forms

• night-mare (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English night-mare, 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 nachtm?r, German Nachtmahr.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?na?t.m??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /na?t.m???/, [n???.m???]

Noun

nightmare (plural nightmares)

1. (now rare) A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep. [from 14th c.]
   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy:

     It haunted me, however, more than once, like the nightmare.

   • 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Black Cat’:

     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!

2. (now chiefly historical) A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; Sleep paralysis. [from 16th c.]
   • 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 209:

     Had been afflicted in the night with that strange complaint called the nightmare.

3. A very bad or frightening dream. [from 19th c.]

   I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.

   • July 18 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises[1]

     With his crude potato-sack mask and fear-inducing toxins, The Scarecrow, a “psychopharmacologist” at an insane asylum, acts as a conjurer of nightmares, capable of turning his patients’ most terrifying anxieties against them.

4. (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure. [from 20th c.]

   Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.

Synonyms

• (demon said to torment sleepers): incubus, succubus, night hag

Related terms

• nightmarish
• daymare

Translations

English

Etymology

From Late Latin incubus, from Latin incub? (“nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper”), from incub?re (“to lie upon, to hatch”), from in- (“on”) + cub?re (“to lie down”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /???.kj?.b?s/, /??n.kj?.b?s/
• Homophone: incubous

Noun

incubus (plural incubi or incubuses)

1. (mediaeval folklore) An evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.

   Antonym: succubus

   Hypernyms: evil spirit, spirit

2. A feeling of oppression during sleep, sleep paralysis; night terrors, a nightmare.

   Synonym: nightmare

   • , vol. I, New York 2001, p.249:

     it increaseth fearful dreams, incubus, night-walking, crying out, and much unquietness  […] .

3. (by extension) Any oppressive thing or person; a burden.
   • August 1935, Clark Ashton Smith, Weird Tales, "The Treader of the Dust":

     Again he felt the impulse of flight: but his body was a dry dead incubus that refused to obey his volition.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 132-3:

     Notions of civic virtue were at that moment changing, in ways which would make of Louis's alleged vices an incubus on the back of the monarchy.

4. (entomology) One of various of parasitic insects, especially subfamily Aphidiinae.

Translations

See also

• incubous
• succubus

Further reading

• incubus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Dutch

Etymology

From Late Latin incubus, from Latin incubo (“nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper”), from incubare (“to lie upon, to hatch”).

Noun

incubus m (plural incubussen or incubi, diminutive incubusje n)

1. An incubus, evil spirit
2. A nightmare, horrible dream
3. A burden, obsession, yoke

Synonyms

• (nightmare) nachtmerrie

See also

• succubus m

Latin

Etymology

From incub?¹ (“I lie upon”, “I brood over”, “I am a burden to”), perhaps via an alteration of the Classical incub?² (“incubus”, “nightmare”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?in.ku.bus/, [???k?b?s?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?in.ku.bus/, [?i?kubus]

Noun

incubus m (genitive incub?); second declension

1. (Late Latin) the nightmare, incubus
   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Augustine of Hippo to this entry?)
   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Isidore of Seville to this entry?)

Declension

Second-declension noun.

Synonyms

• (nightmare, incubus): incubitor, incub?

Descendants

• Dutch: incubus
• English: incubus
• French: incube
• German: Incubus
• Italian: incubo
• Portuguese: íncubo
• Russian: ?????? (inkúb)
• Spanish: incubo

References

• inc?bus in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• INCUBI in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• inc?bus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette, page 801/1
• Niermeyer, Jan Frederik (1976) , “incubo (genet. -onis), incubus”, in Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, Boston: Brill, page 524/2