Origin Of Nightmare Word - Web apparently the word nightmare has only been used in the sense of bad dream since c. Web where does the word nightmare come from? From the incubus to the suffocating sensation it causes. What word or phrase was used earlier? Before then the term referred to the agent causing the dreams—a mare < mera, mære 'goblin, incubus'. Web the oxford english dictionary traces the first used of nightmare in english to around 1300, as a female spirit or monster supposed to settle on and produce a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal. other folk etymology traces the mare of the night in some similar linguistic form all the way to our earliest languages as humans.
From the incubus to the suffocating sensation it causes. What word or phrase was used earlier? Web the oxford english dictionary traces the first used of nightmare in english to around 1300, as a female spirit or monster supposed to settle on and produce a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal. other folk etymology traces the mare of the night in some similar linguistic form all the way to our earliest languages as humans. Web where does the word nightmare come from? Before then the term referred to the agent causing the dreams—a mare < mera, mære 'goblin, incubus'. Web apparently the word nightmare has only been used in the sense of bad dream since c.