Dictionary

hagride en · VERB

Etymology

From hag + ride.

Meanings

1. To harass or torment with dread or nightmares.
   • [I] beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged, and the bandage all bloody—horror!—the fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts, and even to-day (as I recall the scene) darkens daylight. 1888 February, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Lantern-Bearers”, in Scribner’s Magazine, volume 3, number 2, page 252:
   • [He] complains of painful, ominous dreams, which are the bane, the imbitterers of nature’s second feast, hag-riding his imagination all night; 1770, Francis Gentleman, “The Orphan. A Tragedy by Otway”, in The Dramatic Censor: or, Critical Companion, volume 2, page 48:
   • Surely the conception of a Ministry of Love, whose towering office hagrides the city because each citizen believes it has calculated for him the torture he would find most unbearable, corresponds to nothing in Communism and a great deal in the history of Christianity. 1959, William Empson, “letter to Critical Quarterly”, in Selected Letters, page 296:
   • Ye Cardinal Wolves, tear up his Royal Bones, / Do, if you dare! keep your Prerogative / To hector Kingdoms, and to hag-ride Kings. 1680, Elkanah Settle, “Act I, Scene II”, in The Female Prelate, page 19:

Forms

Relateds

hagridden