Incubus
['ɪŋkjʊbəs]
Definition
(noun.) a male demon believed to lie on sleeping persons and to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women.
(noun.) someone who depresses or worries others.
Checker: Monroe--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) A demon; a fiend; a lascivious spirit, supposed to have sexual intercourse with women by night.
(n.) The nightmare. See Nightmare.
(n.) Any oppressive encumbrance or burden; anything that prevents the free use of the faculties.
Checker: Ramona
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. [1]. Nightmare.[2]. Encumbrance, clog, impediment, hinderance, drag weight, dead weight.
Edited by Bessie
Definition
n. the nightmare: a male demon formerly supposed to consort with women in their sleep: any oppressive or stupefying influence:—pl. In′cubuses Incubi (in′kū-bī).
Inputed by Delia
Unserious Contents or Definition
n. One of a race of highly improper demons who though probably not wholly extinct may be said to have seen their best nights. For a complete account of incubi and succubi including incubae and succubae see the Liber Demonorum of Protassus (Paris 1328) which contains much curious information that would be out of place in a dictionary intended as a text-book for the public schools.
Typist: Ludwig
Examples
- A recognition of what an incubus it is should make us hospitable to all those devices which aim at making politics responsive by disturbing the alignments of habit. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
- I tore her up--the incubus! Charlotte Bronte. Villette.
- A subject like the tariff, for example, has absorbed an amount of attention which would justify an historian in calling it the incubus of American politics. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
- For all the parade of learning and dialectic is an after-thought--an accident from the fact that the prophetic genius of Marx appeared in Germany under the incubus of Hegel. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
- My wealthy relative's cheque--henceforth, the incubus of my existence--warns me that I have not done with this record of violence yet. Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone.
Edited by Darrell