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Long ago, the word nightmare designated an evil spirit that made its victims feel like they were suffocating in their sleep (prompting physician-botanist William Turner to introduce "a good remedy agaynst the stranglyng of the nyght mare" in 1562). By the early 1700s, the Age of Reason had arrived, nightmares were bad dreams, and "daymare" was a logically analogous choice when English speakers sought a word for a frightening and uncontrollable fantasy, a run-away daydream. And since the 1800s, when Charles Dickens wrote "a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits" in David Copperfield, we’ve been using "daymare" figuratively. For example, today we might refer to "a logistical daymare."
Examples of daymare in a Sentence
Megan O’Grady, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2020
The idealism of the day takes on a daymare quality.
—Kerry Pieri, Harper's BAZAAR, 6 June 2012
Dictionary Entries Near daymare
Cite this Entry
“Daymare.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daymare. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
daymare
noun
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