The Creative Exploration of Language

Tag Archives: Word Meanings


Nightmare is a half understood word in the sense that the first half is clear, but the second half is not.  What is a mare in this context and what does it have to do with waking up in the middle of the night with your heart pounding?  As it turns out, both halves of the word are interesting and both have remarkably deep and consistent Indo-European roots.

Night is derived from the Proto-Indo European (PIE) word *nekwt, meaning “night”.  This word is remarkably stable across languages and follows a patter of n + vowel + palatal or velar consonant, generally fricative:

  • nacht (German)
  • nox (Latin)
  • naktam (Sanskrit)
  • natt (Swedish)
  • naktis (Lithuanian)

It is also seems to me to be connected to two other words, next and near.  As is often the case, this connection is a bit clearer in German where the words are nächste and nahe, respectively.  Other German words that fit this pattern are nach, which means “to” or “towards” and nachbar, which means “neighbor” in the literal sense of a “near dweller”.

The common thread linking all of these words that follow the form n + vowel + palatal or velar consonant seems to be the idea of proximity or closeness, which fits nicely with the constrictive nature of night and darkness in general.

Now for the second part of the word, mare.  This comes from the Old English word mare, meaning an evil spirit or an incubus.  This word also has deep and consistent Indo-European roots, with the word being mahr in German and mara, marra or mare in the Scandinavian languages.  While there are a couple of competing theories regarding which PIE root mare comes from, the leading contender is *mer, which means “to harm” or “to rub” with the connotation of “chafing”, “rubbing away” or “wearing out”.

Putting the word back together we get to something that seems to indicate an evil spirit in close proximity to the sufferer and putting them under duress with constant, wearying pressure.  Not a bad way to describe something that haunts your sleep and terrifies you while you are unconscious.

In the end, I’m left with thought that the original idea as to the cause of nightmares, a literal demon perched atop you while you sleep, pressing on you, wearing you down in the darkness, is nothing more than a poetic way to describe a phenomenon that would today be described in more prosaic terms using scientific psychological language related to things like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that I don’t think most people understand any better than they understand the term “demon”.

It seems to me that people in both eras attempted to define and describe something complex and poorly understood with terms that were appropriate to their times and cultures.  Ultimately, though, they are both using metaphors and, as usual, the older ones seem more vibrant and compelling.



Thrice Greatest: Maha, Machen, Magnus












Lord and Lady




hlaf– loaf

weard– keeper or guardian (cognate with modern English warden)



hlaf– loaf

dæge– kneader








  • Rey (Spanish)
  • Raja (Sanskrit)
  • Rex (Latin)
  • (Irish)
  • Re (Italian)



  • Gente (Spanish)
  • Jánas (Sanskrit)
  • Genus (Latin)
  • Cine (Irish)
  • Genus (Italian)
  • Génos (Greek)




















Naughty is a word that I have used for years in a silly way, almost always spoken to one of my children when admonishing them for something mildly bad they have said or done.  This usage and meaning are widely understood, but an interesting question arose as I thought about this word recently: why exactly does naughty mean “bad”?

No answer came to me immediately and I didn’t bother to pursue one, but I let the question sit in my subconscious for a few weeks.  Then, one day, I had a flash of insight that allowed me to connect naughty to naught, as in the phrase come to naught, or there’s naught else I can do.  Making this connection made me realize that the root of naughty is an archaic word for “nothing”.

This sent me running for dictionaries and websites in order to understand where naught comes from.  What I found was that naught derives from the Old English word nawiht, where na means “no” and wiht means “thing”.

From this perspective then, to be naughty is to act in a way that is not constructive, that is likely to lead to nothing.  This sense of non-constructiveness seems to be the root of the moralistic tone the word has taken on, perhaps as an outgrowth of the Protestant Work Ethic, which was particularly strong in England.  It is interesting to note that most other European languages (at least the ones with which I am familiar) do not maintain this connection, by which I mean that the common way of rendering naughty in these languages has no connection to the concept of “nothing”.

This moral angle would also explain how the word has come to be used as a humorous descriptor of (often “illegitimate”) sexual behavior.

In the end, I think I find naughty to be such an interesting word because it hides in plain sight, while remaining flexible enough to change with the times and be used in various ways.











Glimpse has a beautiful ring to it which stems, I think, from the fact that it is both simple and complex at the same time.  It is simple in the sense that it is a monosyllabic word with a commonly accepted definition (something like “a quick look”) that is used with reasonable frequency.  On the other hand, it is complex because it contains the relatively unusual but aesthetically pleasing consonant cluster “mps” and because its exotic construction seems to offer the promise of deeper meaning.  After all, if glimpse simply means to have “a quick look”, then why do we have also have glance?

The answer is found quickly once one investigates the origins of glimpse.  It comes ultimately from the Old English word glimsian, which meant “to shine faintly”.  In Middle English, this became glimsen and meant “to glow” or “to glimmer”.  So, from an etymological standpoint, glimpse clearly has a connection to seeing something that is both difficult to see and also something that stands out from its surroundings, usually through emitting light.  This is an interesting paradox and seems to limit the number of things that might become the subject of a glimpse.

The connotation of “quickness” that sometimes causes glimpse to be confused with glance is somewhat misleading and is a secondary characteristic that stems from a structural source: something that is difficult to see is likely to be seen only briefly.

Once this clarification between glimpse and glance is made, some interesting observations result, such as the dichotomy between the words in terms of being passive versus aggressive.  To glance at something is an active effort which is controlled by the glancer and which often, but not always contains a hint of disdain which is the natural byproduct of the active nature of the glance.  What I mean is that if one controls the length and intensity of one’s gaze, then it follows that, by choosing to give something only a quick, cursory look, one is indicating that the item or person being observed is trivial or merely utilitarian.

A glimpse, on the other hand, is passive.  Something glimpsed is something that is revealed to the observer, and is often something that is subtle, incomplete or incongruous.  The true power of glimpse is that it implies a mystery, an incomplete view that promises more and entices the observer to try to see the whole that is hidden.

While a glance might tell you how much your dinner cost or which person in your subway car is speaking too loudly on their cellphone, a glimpse is often the catalyst for an adventure.





