A Word A Day —daymare

with Anu Garg

daymare

(DAY-mayr)

noun: A terrifying experience, similar to a nightmare, felt while awake.

Coined after nightmare, from a combination of day + mare (an evil spirit believed to produce nightmares). Ultimately from the Indo-European root mer- (to rub away or to harm) that is also the source of mordant, amaranth, morbid, mortal, mortgage, ambrosia, and nightmare.

“Reports like these give me a deep and sickening feeling, somewhere between a daymare and deja vu.”
Margaret McCartney; A Swiss Cheese Method to Eliminate Fatal Errors; Financial Times (London, UK); Feb 18, 2006.

The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)