Dictionary

nightmarish en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Etymology tree English nightmare Proto-Indo-European *-iskos Proto-Germanic *-iskaz Proto-West Germanic *-isk Old English -isċ Middle English -isch English -ish English nightmarish From nightmare + -ish.

Meanings

1. Resembling a nightmare.
   • People sometimes find the idea of buying and selling human bones nightmarish, but Ferry told The Washington Post he doesn’t think of it that way. He says he admires and respects the structure of bones. 2021 October 10, Caroline Anders, “A TikTok bone salesman’s wall of spines reignites ethical debate over selling human remains”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 17 Oct 2021:
   • Meanwhile, the everyday landscape becomes more nightmarish and unmanageable each year. 1994, James Howard Kunstler, The geography of nowhere: the rise and decline of America's man-made landscape, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 10:
   • The dragon from under-earth, the nightmarish destroyer, lay destroyed as well, utterly without life. 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 89:
   • Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1949. Its nightmarish fictional world is now 37 years in the past, so one might reasonably conclude that Orwell was far too pessimistic, but his great book was less a prediction than a warning, and above all an analysis of the totalitarian mentality. 2021 January 5, Peter Foster, “Peter Foster: Sustainable Newspeak by 2050”, in Financial Post:

Forms

Coordinates

dysphoric · dystopian

Deriveds

nightmarishness · nightmarishly

Synonyms

nightmarelike · nightmarious · nightmary

Translations (24)

de albtraumartig (resembling a nightmare) · es pesadillesco (resembling a nightmare) · pt pesadelar (resembling a nightmare) · el εφιαλτικός (resembling a nightmare) · sv mardrömsaktig (resembling a nightmare) · et košmaarne (resembling a nightmare) · it da incubo (resembling a nightmare) · et painajalik (resembling a nightmare) · sv mardrömslik (resembling a nightmare) · pl koszmarny (resembling a nightmare) · ru кошма́рный (resembling a nightmare) · fi painajaismainen (resembling a nightmare) · es apesadillado (resembling a nightmare) · lv murgains (resembling a nightmare) · de alptraumhaft (resembling a nightmare) · pt more commonly “to be nightmarish” → “ser um pesadelo” (resembling a nightmare) · lt košmariškas (resembling a nightmare) · eo premsonĝa (resembling a nightmare) · fr cauchemardesque (resembling a nightmare) · da mareridtsagtig (resembling a nightmare) · de alptraumartig (resembling a nightmare) · de albtraumhaft (resembling a nightmare) · nl nachtmerrieachtig (resembling a nightmare) · vo kojmarasümik (resembling a nightmare)