incubus

1. 1.

   a male demon believed to lie on sleeping persons and to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women

   Broaderdevil
2. 2.

   a situation resembling a terrifying dream

   Synonymsnightmare

   Broadersituation
3. 3.

   someone who depresses or worries others

   Broaderunpleasant person

Other forms of incubus

plural

incubi

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about incubus

What does incubus mean?

incubus means "a male demon believed to lie on sleeping persons and to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in incubus?

incubus has 3 syllables: in-cu-bus. The stress falls on "in".

What is another word for incubus?

Close synonyms include nightmare. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is incubus a common word?

incubus is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.