• n. 惡夢；夢魘般的經歷
• adj. 可怕的；噩夢似的

night,夜晚，mare,女妖精，夢淫妖，詞源同murder.原指夜間與男人交媾的女妖，使人窒息和虛脫，后引申詞義噩夢。

nightmare

nightmare: [13] The mare of nightmare is not the same word as mare ‘female horse’. It comes from Old English m?re, 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.
=> yell

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. Taking my son Peter to a restaurant was a nightmare.

帶我兒子彼得外出吃飯簡直糟糕透了。

來自柯林斯例句

2. In practice a graduate tax is an administrative nightmare.

畢業稅具體操作起來不啻一場行政噩夢。

來自柯林斯例句

3. His abrasive wit and caustic comments were an interviewer's nightmare.

他睿智刁鉆，評論尖刻，對任何采訪他的人而言都是夢魘。

來自柯林斯例句

4. They began to recover slowly from their nightmare of pain and suffering.

他們開始從痛苦的夢魘中慢慢恢復過來。

來自柯林斯例句

5. Discovering your child takes drugs is a nightmare scenario for most parents.

對大多數父母來說，發現自己的孩子吸毒簡直就是場噩夢。

來自柯林斯例句