Noun

(label) The sense or ability of sight.

Something seen; an object perceived visually.

* 1610 , , I. ii. 270:

For to a vision so apparent rumour / Cannot be mute

*{{quote-book, year=1892, author=(James Yoxall)

, chapter=7, title= The Lonely Pyramid , passage=It was the Lost Oasis, the Oasis of the vision in the sand. […] Deep-hidden in the hollow, beneath the cliffs, it lay; and round it the happy verdure spread for many a rood. […] Yes, the quest was ended, the Lost Oasis was the Found!}}

(label) Something imaginary one thinks one sees.

(label) Something unreal or imaginary; a creation of fancy.

(John Locke)

(label) An ideal or a goal toward which one aspires.

(label) A religious or mystical experience of a supernatural appearance.

(label) A person or thing of extraordinary beauty.

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.