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Nightmare vs Mara - What's the difference?

nightmare | mara |

As nouns the difference between nightmare and mara

is that nightmare is a female demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep while mara is (folklore) a nightmare; a spectre or wraith-like creature in germanic and particularly scandinavian folklore; a female demon who torments people in sleep by crouching on their chests or stomachs, or by causing terrifying visions or mara can be (buddhism) a malicious or evil spirit or mara can be any caviid rodent of genus dolichotis , common in the patagonian steppes of argentina.

nightmare

English

(wikipedia 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)

    Related terms

    * nightmarish

    mara

    English

    Etymology 1

    .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (folklore) A nightmare; a spectre or wraith-like creature in Germanic and particularly Scandinavian folklore; a female demon who torments people in sleep by crouching on their chests or stomachs, or by causing terrifying visions.
  • * 1996 , Catharina Raudvere, "Now you see her, now you don't: some notes on the conception of female shape-shifters in Scandinavian traditions", pages 41-55 in'' Sandra Billington & Miranda Green (editors) ''The Concept of the Goddess
    • The corpus of related texts tells us that within rural society it was not improbable for your neighbour's envy of your fine cattle to take the form of a mara .
    External links
    *

    Etymology 2

    .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (Buddhism) A malicious or evil spirit.
  • * 2002 , Sarvananda Bluestone, The World Dream Book , page 73
    • The mara''''' is the spirit that causes illness, accidents, and mishaps. The only protection against it is another '''mara''' who befriends a person or a group. A '''mara''' who becomes friendly is called a ''gunik''. This transformation occurs when a '''mara''' comes to a person in a dream and states a desire to be friendly. But there are deceitful ' maras who pretend to be friendly, yet will betray the person who trusts them.
    External links
    *

    Etymology 3

    From New World (etyl) .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Any caviid rodent of genus Dolichotis , common in the Patagonian steppes of Argentina.
  • * 1999', '''''Mara'' , entry in Michael A. Mares (editor), ''Encyclopedia of Deserts , page 349,
    • Maras have a white patch of fur on the rump that they flash when running, an adaptation they share with several species of deer and antelopes.
  • * 2011 , Terry A. Vaughan, ?James M. Ryan, & ?Nicholas J. Czaplewski, Mammalogy , 5th edition, page 228,
    • Although only Dolichotis , the Patagonian mara , is strongly cursorial, all caviids have certain features typical of cursorial mammals.
  • * 2013 , R. L. Honeycutt, Chapter 3: Phylogenetics of Caviomorph Rodents and Genetic Perspectives on the Evolution of Sociality and Mating Systems in the Caviidae'', José Roberto Moreira, Katia Maria P.M.B. Ferraz, Emilio A. Herrera, David W. Macdonald (editors), ''Capybara: Biology, Use and Conservation of an Exceptional Neotropical Species , page 70,
    • Maras (Dolichotis patagonum ) are cursorial and prefer open areas with low vegetation for breeding and more barren sites for construction of communal dens (Taber and Macdonald 1992; Baldi 2007).
    Derived terms
    * (Patagonian mara) () * (Chacoan mara) ()
    External links
    * * (Dolichotis) * (Dolichotis)

    Anagrams

    * (l), (l), (l) ----