Word.ws English Dictionary

incubus

UK/ˈɪŋ.kjʊ.bəs/

incubus noun: an evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.

incubus: an evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they...
Image: Henry Fuseli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

incubus (plural incubi or incubuses)

  1. (mediaeval folklore) An evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.
  2. A feeling of oppression during sleep, sleep paralysis; night terrors, a nightmare.
    • it increaseth fearful dreams, incubus, night-walking, crying out, and much unquietness […] .Burton with W.H. Gass, The Anatomy of Melancholy, NYRB Classics ser. (New York: New York Review Books, 2001, orig. 1932), vol. 1, p. 249
    Synonyms:
    nightmare
  3. (broadly) Any oppressive thing or person; a burden.
    • Again he felt the impulse of flight: but his body was a dry dead incubus that refused to obey his volition.August 1935, Clark Ashton Smith, Weird Tales, "The Treader of the Dust"
    • Ahead of us the lowering smoke-screen of Leeds and her gloomy satellites hung like an incubus over the land.1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 82
  4. One of various of parasitic insects, especially subfamily Aphidiinae.

incubus meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

incubus in Tamil

உறங்கும்போது அமுத்தும் பிசாசு, தீக்கனவு, பேய்க்கனா, இரவு அச்சம், தூக்கத்தில் அச்சம்

incubus in Marathi

an evil spirit
इंक्युबस iṅkyubas

incubus in Urdu

incubus
کابوس kābūs

incubus in Bengali

দুশ্চিন্তা
More languagesFewer languages
incubus in Kannada
ನಿದ್ರಾಭೂತ, ನಿದ್ದೆದೆವ್ವ, ದುಃಸ್ವಪ್ನ, ಸ್ವಪ್ನಪಿಶಾಚಿ
incubus in Arabic
جَاثُوم jāṯūm, كَابُوس kābūs, كابوس, حلم
incubus in Persian
کابوس kâbus, بختک baxtak, درفنجک darfanjak

Synonyms of incubus

Forms of incubus

pluralincubi
pluralincubuses

Plural of incubus: incubi or incubuses

Origin of incubus

From Late Latin incubus, from Latin incubō (“nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper”), from incubō (“to lie upon, to hatch”, from in- (“on”) + cubō (“to lie down”)).

Questions about incubus

What does incubus mean?
Incubus means an evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.
What is incubus in Tamil?
Incubus in Tamil is உறங்கும்போது அமுத்தும் பிசாசு, தீக்கனவு, பேய்க்கனா. See Incubus meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is incubus?
Incubus is a noun.
How do you pronounce incubus?
Incubus is pronounced /ˈɪŋ.kjʊ.bəs/ (UK).
What is the plural of incubus?
The plural of incubus is incubi.

Words near incubus in the dictionary

  1. incubi
  2. incubing
  3. incubiture
  4. incubous
  5. incubously
  6. incubus
  7. incubuses
  8. incudal
  9. incudate
  10. incudectomy
  11. incudes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incubus (page history and authors); incubus (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); کابوس (Urdu) (page history and authors); incubus (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); incubus (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-incubus.ogg, en-au-incubus.ogg.

Cite this entry: “incubus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/incubus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.