What's "worse" than a nightmare depends on if you mean a more intense sleep event or a worse real-life experience, with night terrors (parasomnias) being more chaotic and terrifying sleep episodes, while real-life traumas, chronic pain, serious illness, or profound loss are objectively worse, as they have lasting, tangible negative impacts beyond just a bad dream.
abhorrent abominable appalling awful cruel disgusting dreadful eerie frightful ghastly grim grisly gruesome heinous hideous horrendous horrid lousy nasty scandalous scary shameful shocking terrible terrifying.
The earliest known use of the adjective nightmarish is in the 1830s. OED's earliest evidence for nightmarish is from 1834, in Fraser's Magazine.
Nightmare disorder is a pattern of repeated frightening and vivid dreams that cause significant distress or impaired functioning. Nightmare disorder is one type of parasomnias, which are behavioral sleep abnormalities.
A nightmare, also known as a bad dream, is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety, disgust or sadness.
This video shows what Lucid Nightmares look like in first person view. Lucid Nightmares occur when you become aware that you're dreaming, but cannot control it and bad things start to happen.
Words with a scary tone include adjectives like “eerie,” “creepy,” “sinister,” “haunting,” and “terrifying,” and verbs and nouns like “creep,” “scream,” “dread,” and “fear.”To explore more spooky words, try QuillBot's Paraphraser.
The three types of nightmares are idiopathic, recurrent, and post-traumatic. Idiopathic Nightmares – are dream sequences that are not the result of trauma but often happen when a person is very stressed.
You should never ignore dreams that signal feeling overwhelmed (falling, drowning, being lost), a lack of control (car troubles), missed chances (missing transport), or recurring negative patterns (back to old schools/homes), as these often point to real-life anxiety, stagnation, or unresolved issues you need to address, with some spiritual interpretations also flagging attacks or spiritual pollution like eating food in dreams. Paying attention to vivid, recurring, or disturbing dreams can offer profound insights into your subconscious and guide you toward necessary changes for personal growth and clarity.
For some people with PTSD, sleep paralysis is not only a symptom but also a trigger for additional anxiety and general mental ill-health. That's because temporary immobility from sleep paralysis can blur the boundaries between reality and nightmares.
In slang, "hornier" means feeling more sexually aroused, excited, lustful, or eager for sex; it's the comparative form of "horny," describing a greater degree of sexual desire or being easily turned on, often used informally to say someone is feeling more "turned on" or "randy" than usual.
Clinical relevance: Nightmares might not only signal hidden stress but also predict faster aging, early death, and even suicide risk. Adults with weekly nightmares were nearly three times more likely to die before age 75. Children with frequent nightmares also showed signs of accelerated aging.
the quality of being ugly or unpleasant, or not enjoyable: an oil town of unrelenting grimness.
The crime scene was too horrible to describe. The team had a horrible season last year. He suffered a horrible death. He realized that he had made a horrible mistake.
sinful, immoral. Synonyms. STRONGEST. bad corrupt destructive hateful heinous hideous malevolent malicious nefarious ugly unpleasant vicious vile villainous wicked.
Synonym Chooser
Some common synonyms of ghastly are grisly, gruesome, lurid, and macabre. While all these words mean "horrifying and repellent in appearance or aspect," ghastly suggests the terrifying aspects of corpses and ghosts. How do grisly and gruesome relate to one another, in the sense of ghastly?
The rarest type of dream is often considered to be the lucid dream, where you are aware you're dreaming and can sometimes control the dream's narrative, with only a small percentage of people experiencing them regularly, though many have had one spontaneously. Even rarer are dreams with specific, unusual content, like dreaming of doing math, or experiencing rare neurological conditions like Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome, where people lose the ability to visualize dreams.
#1) To Warn Us: In Job 33, it says God “whispers in their ear and terrifies them with warnings.” Sometimes God sends us subtle warnings through dreams to help us avoid danger. In the New Testament, we also see God warn Jesus' family via a dream recorded in Matthew 2:13.
A question about déjà rêve (already dreamt, a form of déjà experience) was included in a large "sleep, dreams, and personality" survey of 444 (mainly psychology) students at three German universities. The incidence of déjà rêve was high (95.2%) and, like most other déjà experiences, was negatively correlated with age.
We'll explore 10 common dreams many people have and dissect their possible meanings.
They often occur as intense, distressing, or vivid dreams that replay the traumatic event or aspects of it, causing significant anxiety and fear. People with PTSD may experience these intense nightmares regularly, and they often go beyond typical bad dreams.
Nightmares can arise for a number of reasons—stress, anxiety, irregular sleep, medications, mental health disorders—but perhaps the most studied cause is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
17 words that will never fail you: Prepare, Care, Believe, Forgive, Change, Risk, Listen, Choose, Relax, Pray, Persist, Smile, Focus, Act, Trust, Accept, and Wait 🦋
nocturne, obsidian, revenant, spectral, eclipsed, tenebrous, veil, charnel, wraith, lament, solace, echoes, requiem, sombre, sable, elegy, forsaken, sepulchre, necropolis, phantasm, ossuary, hallowed, opalescent, moonlit, sanguine, chiaroscuro, velvet, shadowplay.
"scary" Example Sentences
We watched a scary film last night. That rollercoaster looks pretty scary! "The Shining" is one of the scariest films I've seen. She can't fall asleep after she watches a scary movie.