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The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli, 1781. A mare (Old English: mære, Old Dutch: mare; Old Norse, Old High German and Swedish: mara; Proto-Slavic *mara) is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that walks on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on nightmares. [1]
The etymology of the word "nightmare" is derived from mara, a Scandinavian mythological term referring to a spirit sent to torment or suffocate sleepers. The early meaning of nightmare included the sleeper's experience of weight on the chest combined with sleep paralysis, dyspnea, or a feeling of dread. [6]
A nightmare, also known as a bad dream, [1] is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety, disgust or sadness. The dream may contain situations of discomfort, psychological or physical terror, or panic .
The Late Latin word incubus ("a nightmare induced by a demon") is derived from Latin incubō ("nightmare, what lies down on one whilst one sleeps") and further from incubāre ("to lie upon, to hatch"). [3]
There is some disagreement over the meaning of the Morrígan's name. Mor may derive from an Indo-European root connoting terror, monstrousness, cognate with the Old English maere (which survives in the modern English word "nightmare") and the Scandinavian mara and the Old East Slavic "mara" ("nightmare"); [15] while rígan translates as "queen".
Epiales was also known as Melas Oneiros (Black Dream). [1]"The words epialos, epiales and epioles denote (1) the feverish chill (2) the daimon who assaults sleepers. Homer and most writers have epioles with the e; the form in -os means something different, namely the feverish chill . . .
As the apparent convergence with dwarves suggests, the word alp declined in use in German after the medieval period, though it still occurs in some fossilised uses, most prominently the word for "nightmare", Alptraum ("elf-dream"). [18] Variations of the German elf in later folklore include the moss people [19] and the Weiße Frauen ("White ...
Most sources link the suffix -mora with the Proto-Slavic *morà ('nightly spirit, bad dream') and the Proto-Germanic *marōn (id.), as in the modern English nightmare. [2] [3]In Polish folklore, mora are the souls of living people that leave the body during the night, and are seen as wisps of straw or hair or as moths.