incubus

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
11
Words With Friends
16
Letters
7
Pronunciation
/ˈɪŋ.kjʊ.bəs/(UK)
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈɪŋ.kjʊ.bəs/(UK) · /ˈɪn.kjə.bəs/(UK)

Definition of incubus

4 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. An evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.
See all 4 definitions

noun

  1. An evil spirit supposed to oppress people while asleep, especially to have sex with women as they sleep.
  2. A feeling of oppression during sleep, sleep paralysis; night terrors, a nightmare.
    “it increaseth fearful dreams, incubus, night-walking, crying out, and much unquietness […] .”
  3. (broadly)Any oppressive thing or person; a burden.
    “Again he felt the impulse of flight: but his body was a dry dead incubus that refused to obey his volition.”
    “Ahead of us the lowering smoke-screen of Leeds and her gloomy satellites hung like an incubus over the land.”
    “Notions of civic virtue were at that moment changing, in ways which would make of Louis's alleged vices an incubus on the back of the monarchy.”
  4. One of various of parasitic insects, especially subfamily Aphidiinae.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Late Latin incubus, from Latin incubō (“nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper”), from incubō (“to lie upon, to hatch”, from in- (“on”) + cubō (“to lie down”)).

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