English-French translations for nightmare

• cauchemar
  Serait-ce un rêve ou un cauchemar? A dream scenario or a nightmare?
  Je fais toutefois souvent des cauchemars.However, I regularly suffer nightmares.
  Il s'agit du pire cauchemar de l'Irlande du Nord. It is Northern Ireland's worst nightmare.
• mauvais rêve
• tourment
  La PCP est devenue un cauchemar bureaucratique, l'excès de réglementation et la micro gestion tourmentant l'industrie et donnant peu de résultats positifs. The CFP has become a bureaucratic nightmare with over regulation and micro-management plaguing the industry while achieving little in the way of positive outcomes.

Definition of nightmare

• A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep
• Sleep paralysis
• A very bad or frightening dream
• Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure

Synonyms

• succubus
• night hag

Examples

• I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.
• Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.

Related words

• nightmarish
• have a nightmare
• American Nightmare