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Midnight vs Nightmare - What's the difference?

midnight | nightmare |

As nouns the difference between midnight and nightmare

is that midnight is the middle of the night; 12:00 am; on a 12-hour clock, 12:00 at night; on a 24-hour clock, 00:00 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.

midnight

Noun

(en noun)
  • The middle of the night; 12:00 am; on a 12-hour clock, 12:00 at night; on a 24-hour clock, 00:00.
  • * :
  • "She twisted her hands behind her;
    but all the knots held good!
    She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
    They stretched and strained in the darkness,
    and the hours crawled by like years,
    Till, now, on the stroke of midnight ,
    Cold, on the stroke of midnight ,
    The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
  • The middle of the night: the moment of time, which is equidistant between sunset and sunrise.
  • Antonyms

    * noon, midday

    Derived terms

    * burn the midnight oil * midnight regulation * postmidnight

    See also

    *

    nightmare

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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 :
  • It haunted me, however, more than once, like the nightmare .
  • *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.
  • I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
  • * July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]
  • 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.
  • (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure.
  • Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.

    Synonyms

    * (demon said to torment sleepers) incubus (male demon afflicting female sleeper), succubus * (bad dream) night terror (sleep disorder)