Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use nightmare in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Nightmare means a very unpleasant or frightening dream. Example: “I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.”

Examples of nightmare by meaning

nounA very unpleasant or frightening dream.

  • I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.

nounAny bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great...

  • Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.
  • Its façade is a nightmare of improbable Gothic.1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358

verbTo experience a nightmare.

  • Brother Fary of Omaha was nightmaring the rest of the night.1931, The Sleeping Car Conductor, page 16
  • First I think I’m nightmaring.1998, Andrea Benton Rushing, “Surviving Rape: A Morning/Mourning Ritual”, in Mary E. Odem, Jody Clay-Warner, editors, Confronting Rape and...
  • Every night, Liesel would nightmare.2006, Markus Zusak, “The Woman with the Iron Fist”, in The Book Thief, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 36

verbTo imagine (someone or something) as in a nightmare.

  • For a moment I thought it was a nightmare, and that I was nightmaring the whole thing.1983, Shirley Eskapa, chapter 16, in The Secret-Keeper, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 99
  • Stars have no need of intimidation, which makes them mightier than all the godheads nightmared by mere humanity.2013, Caitlín R[ebekah] Kiernan, “Random Thoughts Before a Fatal Crash”, in The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories, Burton, Mich.: Subterranean...
  • I hurried through the arch, was dipped into shadow, and was glad to have my screaming eyes rinsed clean of this vision of a scrabbling, gibbering hell, worse than any nightmared by Bosch or Goya.2016, Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch; Volume Two: Empire Decayed, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster BFYR, →ISBN, page 122

More sentences with nightmare

  • I had a dreadful nightmare last night; I hope I sleep better tonight.From the entry tonight
  • Your nightmares stopped when you were eight years old, but after the house burned down, you regressed.From the entry regress
  • He still has nightmares resulting from the abusive treatment he received from his captors.From the entry treatment
  • The children's mother was worried that the spine-chilling ghost film would give them nightmares.From the entry spine-chilling
  • The cold was a foreboder of the nightmares of the winter that lay ahead.From the entry foreboder
  • The first time I watched Chucky, I had nightmares for weeks.From the entry chucky
  • The constant rain made the harvest a nightmare this year.From the entry harvest
  • Pilling the cat is such a nightmare.From the entry pill
  • The incessant nightmares drove him to distraction.From the entry distraction
  • Feeding all those people will be a logistical nightmare.From the entry logistical
  • After nearly twelve hours at the office plus a nightmare commute home, I was fried and couldn’t think of anything but sleep.From the entry fried
  • The nation’s capital is no longer a Democrat-run nightmare of murder and lawlessness.2026 August 10, “One Year Later, President Trump Has Delivered on Making D.C. Safe Again”, in The White House, archived from the original…. From the entry lawlessness
  • He might have nightmares featuring the face of Courtois, such was the one-man barricade he formed.2022 May 28, Phil McCulty, “Liverpool 0-1 Real Madrid”, in BBC Sport. From the entry barricade
  • Often, somniphobia arises from a fear of having nightmares or experiencing sleep paralysis.2022, Cleveland Clinic, Somniphobia (Fear of Sleep). From the entry somniphobia
  • While the simplicity of the app's UI is great, it's just a nightmare to navigate.2018 November 26, Google Play. From the entry mistap
  • For many residents, a monocrop of million-dollar homes is nearly as awful a nightmare as suburban sprawl.2015 November 3, Greg Beato, “Communities Come Together to Make Homes More Affordable”, in New York Times. From the entry monocrop
  • Creatures of man's oldest nightmares were the other side of that face.2014, Lisa Williamson, Echoes of Elder Times Collection. From the entry slavery
  • On its evanescent surface, the image of a Cthulhian nightmare warped in and out of view.2014, Katina French, Whiskey on the Rocks, page 35. From the entry Cthulhian
  • PTSD may cause mania-like hypervigilance and insomnia as well as nightmares.2013, David Mylan Kaufman, Mark J. Milstein, Kaufman's Clinical Neurology for Psychiatrists. From the entry mania-like
  • They will surely lose their minds if they're confronted with the nightmares from their mortal lives.”2012, James Lowder, Prince of Lies. From the entry spiritling
  • The nightmare on the shucks experienced by young Bayard becomes, in Sanctuary, exponentially more deranging.2010, Philip Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner, page 92. From the entry deranging
  • As we approached Ground Zero, I felt like I was entering a nightmare.2010, George W. Bush, Decision Points, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 148. From the entry ground zero
  • In other words, it's a troubleshooting nightmare when the cloud goes bust. . . .2008 July 21, Larry Dignan, “Amazon's S3 outage: Is the cloud too complicated?”, in ZDNet, retrieved 02 Mar 2017. From the entry rat's nest
  • There's gonna be maggots, and that means I'm gonna have nightmares."2007, John Leake, Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer. From the entry decomp
  • You can think of Bailey as an identity politician's worst nightmare.2007, Kevin G. Barnhurst, Media Q: Media/queered: Visibility and Its Discontents, page 85. From the entry identity politician
  • “I need you to practice because the end of this nightmare is coming to an end.2006, Ashaki Boelter, Destined to Win, Shakalot High Entertainment,, →ISBN, page 139. From the entry phantom punch
  • It is also a nightmare for the wheelies, or wheelchair users.2005, Imogen Edwards-Jones, “Anonymous” [pseudonym], “6–7 am”, in Air Babylon, London: Bantam Press, →ISBN; republished London: Corgi…. From the entry wheelie
  • Standing atop the ridgeline, King Edward watched the nightmare scenario he himself had predicted.2005, Margaret Weis, chapter 34, in Master of Dragons, Macmillan, →ISBN. From the entry ridgeline
  • Sound effects are often enlisted to externalize a characters' inner thoughts, nightmares, hallucinations, dreams, or wishes.2005, Jennifer Van Sijll, “Sound Effects”, in Cinematic Storytelling, →ISBN, page 90. From the entry metadiegetic
  • Nightmares were, after all, a type of demon; they could dematerialize in much the way Fiant did.2002, Piers Anthony, Ogre, Ogre, page 9. From the entry dematerialize
  • I wonder how many sibling points I'll get for this nightmare scenario of teensitting.2002 June 29, “Se7en [Poll]”, in alt.gothic (Usenet), archived from the original on 28 Oct 2025. From the entry teensit

Meaning of nightmare

  1. noun A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
  2. noun Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
  3. noun A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.

Full definition of nightmare

Questions about nightmare in a sentence

How do you use nightmare in a sentence?
Nightmare is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.”
What is a short sentence with nightmare?
“Every night, Liesel would nightmare.”
What does nightmare mean?
Nightmare means a very unpleasant or frightening dream.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nightmare (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use nightmare in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/nightmare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.