Origin of the Word "Nightmare"

[Dewgong Reign]

I remember hearing somewhere that it actually had something to do with mares...

Anyone know? It sort of made me curious.

 

[Megaron]

I'm not sure about this, but weren't there three or four... Dudes riding on horses that are said to appear during the Apocalypse? I recall one of them being Terror, so maybe the name of "nightmare" is a reference to Terror riding on a female horse. I dunno.
Sue me.

 

[Katherine]

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that the word "mare" is an Old English word for "demon", and it was believed that demons were the source for bad dreams.
Therefore, we get "Nightmare".

 

[Aeneas]

Weird. The dutch word for nightmare is "nachtmerrie".

"Nacht" means "night" and "merrie" means "mare".

 

[Maze]

Nightmare was the original term for the state later known as waking dream (cf. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein's Genesis), and more currently as sleep paralysis, associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The original definition was codified by Dr Johnson in his A Dictionary of the English Language. Such nightmares were widely considered to be the work of demons and more specifically incubi, which were thought to sit on the chests of sleepers. In Old English the name for these beings was mare or mære (from a proto-Germanic *marōn, cf. Old Norse mara), hence comes the mare part in nightmare.

Wikipedia has yet to fail me

 

[Zeta]

So it's derived from you being raped by demons and thus them riding you like a horse. That's really scary.

 

[Dewgong Reign]

So it's derived from you being raped by demons and thus them riding you like a horse. That's really scary.

rapid=/=raped

horse=/=chest-sitters

 

[Zeta]

Incubi/Succubi's whole scthick was raping people in their sleep.

 

[Dewgong Reign]

... I see.

 

[Aladar]

Actually, I've heard that Medieval people came up with the whole succubi/incubi things just to justify their wet dreams. I think I read it in Wikipedia...