Figment vs Nightmare - What's the difference?
figment | nightmare |
A fabrication, fantasy, invention; something fictitious.
* 1989 (Sep 30), R. McNeill Alexander, "Biomechanics in the days before Newton", New Scientist volume 123, No. 1684, page 59
* 1999 , Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener , page 12
* 2004 , Daniel C. Noel, In a Wayward Mood: Selected Writings 1969-2002 , page 256
A female demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.
* 1817 , (Walter Scott), Rob Roy :
*1843 , (Edgar Allan Poe), ‘The Black Cat’:
*:I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight—an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—incumbent eternally upon my heart!
A very bad or frightening dream.
* July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]
(figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
As nouns the difference between figment and nightmare
is that figment is a fabrication, fantasy, invention; something fictitious while nightmare is a female demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep.figment
English
Noun
(en noun)- He had not seen sarcomeres: these segments were a figment of his imagination.
- Perhaps, dear reader, you are only a figment in the dream of some god, as Sherlock Holmes was a figment in the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Jung's implication here is clearly that one should try to forget that this is only a figment or fantasy, merely make-believe—or perhaps that one should forget the “only,” the “merely”—and indeed take the fantasy seriously as a reality.
Usage notes
* Often used in the form "a figment of [someone's] imagination".References
* *nightmare
English
(wikipedia nightmare)Noun
(en noun)- It haunted me, however, more than once, like the nightmare .
- I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
- With his crude potato-sack mask and fear-inducing toxins, The Scarecrow, a “psychopharmacologist” at an insane asylum, acts as a conjurer of nightmares , capable of turning his patients’ most terrifying anxieties against them.
- Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.