A lot of people think that the “mare” in “nightmare” refers to a horse—like the one ominously poking its head past the curtain in Swiss painter Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting The Nightmare, one of the most iconic (and appropriately nightmarish) depictions of the subject ever created.
However, this is not the case. The real origins of the word “nightmare”—obscured by the passage of time and the rise of different contemporary connotations—can be found in another part of the painting: namely, the equally unsettling goblin crouching on the sleeping woman’s chest.
