mara

Borrowed from Old Norse mara, from Proto-Germanic *marǭ, cognate with Old English mare or mære. See nightmare.

mara (plural maras)

1. (folklore) A nightmare; a spectre or wraith-like creature in Germanic and particularly Scandinavian folklore; a female demon who torments people in sleep by crouching on their chests or stomachs, or by causing terrifying visions.
   • 1996, Catharina Raudvere, "Now you see her, now you don't: some notes on the conception of female shape-shifters in Scandinavian traditions", pages 41-55 in Sandra Billington & Miranda Green (editors) The Concept of the Goddess

     The corpus of related texts tells us that within rural society it was not improbable for your neighbour's envy of your fine cattle to take the form of a mara.

• Mare (folklore) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Mara (right) tries to prevent the Buddha from attaining enlightenment, a wall painting in Penang, Malaysia

Borrowed from Sanskrit मार (māra).

mara (plural maras)

1. (Buddhism) A type of god that prevents accomplishment or success.
2. (Buddhism) Any malicious or evil spirit.
   • 2002, Sarvananda Bluestone, The World Dream Book, page 73

     The mara is the spirit that causes illness, accidents, and mishaps. The only protection against it is another mara who befriends a person or a group. A mara who becomes friendly is called a gunik. This transformation occurs when a mara comes to a person in a dream and states a desire to be friendly. But there are deceitful maras who pretend to be friendly, yet will betray the person who trusts them.

• Mara

• Mara (demon) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From New World Spanish mará.

mara (plural maras)

1. Any caviid rodent of genus Dolichotis, common in the Patagonian steppes of Argentina.
   • 1999, Mara, entry in Michael A. Mares (editor), Encyclopedia of Deserts, page 349,

     Maras have a white patch of fur on the rump that they flash when running, an adaptation they share with several species of deer and antelopes.

   • 2011, Terry A. Vaughan, James M. Ryan, & Nicholas J. Czaplewski, Mammalogy, 5th edition, page 228,

     Although only Dolichotis, the Patagonian mara, is strongly cursorial, all caviids have certain features typical of cursorial mammals […] .

   • 2013, R. L. Honeycutt, Chapter 3: Phylogenetics of Caviomorph Rodents and Genetic Perspectives on the Evolution of Sociality and Mating Systems in the Caviidae, José Roberto Moreira, Katia Maria P.M.B. Ferraz, Emilio A. Herrera, David W. Macdonald (editors), Capybara: Biology, Use and Conservation of an Exceptional Neotropical Species, page 70,

     Maras (Dolichotis patagonum) are cursorial and prefer open areas with low vegetation for breeding and more barren sites for construction of communal dens (Taber and Macdonald 1992; Baldi 2007).

• Patagonian mara (Dolichotis patagonum)
• Chacoan mara (Dolichotis salinicola)

• Mara (mammal) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Dolichotis on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Dolichotis on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

• -rama, ARMA, Amar, Aram, Rama, Rāma, maar

From Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

mara

1. hand

mará

1. dry; parched

From Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

mara

1. hand

From maro +‎ -a.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmara/
• Hyphenation: mar‧a
• Rhymes: -ara

mara (accusative singular maran, plural maraj, accusative plural marajn)

1. sea, of or relating to the sea

Painajainen ("Nightmare"; "Nachtmahr" in German), a painting of a mara, by Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1781

Borrowed to Western Finnish dialects from Swedish mara, which is a demon that sits on the chest of a sleeping person and causes bad dreams. This demon is known by similar names among Germanic peoples and lives in English nightmare, in Swedish mardröm (“nightmare”) and in German Nachtmahr (“nightmare”), among others.

mara

1. (folklore) nightmare, mara (demon that causes bad dreams)

   Synonym: painajainen

From Spanish mará.

mara

1. mara (hare-like South American rodent of the family Dolichotis)

• maar

• mārā, márá, murra, mŭrră

From Proto-Central New South Wales *mara, from Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

• IPA^(key): /maɻa/

mara

1. hand
2. finger

• 1856, William Ridley, On the Kamilaroi Tribe of Australians and Their Dialect, in Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, volume 4:

  Hand . . . mārā

  Fingers . . mŭrră.

• 1856, William Ridley, gurre kamilaroi, or Kamilaroi Sayings

  immanuel murra kawāni miedul, goe, “miēdūl waria.”

  Immanuel by hand took the girl, said “damsel arise”.

• 1873, William Ridley, Australian Languages and Traditions, in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, volume 2:

  Hand|murra

• 1903, R. H. Mathews, Languages of the Kamilaroi and Other Aboriginal Tribes of New South Wales, in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, volume 33:

  Hand .... ....|murra

• Barry Alpher Proto-Pama-Nyungan etyma, in Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, edited by Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004)
• Peter Austin, A Reference Dictionary of Gamilaraay, northern New South Wales (1993)

From Portuguese amarrar. Cognates with Kabuverdianu mára.

The Portuguese word comes from Dutch aanmeren.

mara

1. to tie

From Sanskrit मार (māra, “slaughter, destruction”).

mara (plural mara-mara, first-person possessive maraku, second-person possessive maramu, third-person possessive maranya)

1. calamity
2. danger

• bahaya
• bencana
• malapetaka

• IPA^(key): [ˈmˠaɾˠə]

mara f

1. inflection of muir (“sea”):
   1. genitive singular
   2. plural

mara

1. Cois Fharraige form of mura (“if... not, unless”)

• "mara" in Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
• Entries containing “mara” in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm, 1959, by Tomás de Bhaldraithe.
• Entries containing “mara” in New English-Irish Dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge.

mara

1. Rōmaji transcription of まら

From Arabic اِمْرَأة‎ (imraʾa, “woman; wife”). Formally, a backformation from the latter’s definite form اَلْمَرْأة‎ (al-marʾa) as in most modern Arabic dialects.

mara f (plural nisa)

1. woman
2. wife

mara (using Raguileo Alphabet)

1. rabbit
2. hare

• Wixaleyiñ: Mapucezugun-wigkazugun pici hemvlcijka (Wixaleyiñ: Small Mapudungun-Spanish dictionary), Beretta, Marta; Cañumil, Dario; Cañumil, Tulio, 2008.

From Proto-Ngayarda *mara, from Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

• IPA^(key): /maɻa/

mara

1. hand

• Barry Alpher Proto-Pama-Nyungan etyma, in Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, edited by Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004)
• Dench, Alan Charles. 1995. Martuthunira: A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Series C-125.

From Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

mara

1. hand

• marra
• maar (eastern dialect)

From Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

mara

1. (northern dialect) hand

From Proto-Germanic *maizô. Compare Old Frisian māra (West Frisian mear), Old Saxon mēro (Low German mehr), Dutch meer, Old High German mēro (German mehr), Old Norse meiri (Danish mere, Swedish mera), Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌶𐌰 (maiza).

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɑːrɑ/

māra

1. more

• Middle English: more
  • English: more
• Scots: mair

mara

1. second-person singular imperative active of marati (“to die”)

From Proto-Ngayarda *mara, from Proto-Pama-Nyungan *mara.

• IPA^(key): /maɻa/

mara

1. hand

• Barry Alpher Proto-Pama-Nyungan etyma, in Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, edited by Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004)
• Dench, Alan. 1991. ‘Panyjima’. R.M.W. Dixon, Barry J. Blake (eds.) The Handbook of Australian Languages, Volume 4. Melbourne: Oxford University Press Australia, 125–244.

From Portuguese amarrar and Spanish amarrar and Kabuverdianu mára.

The Portuguese word comes from Dutch aanmeren.

mara

1. to tie

From Proto-Slavic *mara.

• IPA^(key): /ˈma.ra/

mara f

1. (literary) dream, nightmare
2. (from Slavic mythology) creature drinking blood of sleeping people; wight. See: zmora

• mara in Polish dictionaries at PWN

mara

1. third-person singular (ele and ela, also used with você and others) present indicative of marar
2. second-person singular (tu, sometimes used with você) affirmative imperative of marar

mara f sg

1. genitive singular of muir (“sea, ocean”)

From marabunta

mara f (plural maras)

1. (colloquial, El Salvador) people in one's in-group (e.g. at work, at school, in one's soccer team, who may or may not be friends)

   Cariño, hoy en la noche saldré con la mara de la empresa. ― Honey, today at night I'll go out with the people from the company.

2. (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico) criminal gang

   A mediados de 2012, se acordó una tregua entre las maras salvadoreñas y el gobierno local. ― In mid-2012, a truce was concerted between the Salvadoran gangs and the local government.

• pandilla f

• marero m

mara f (plural maras)

1. Patagonian mara (Dolichotis australis)

From Arabic مَرَّة‎ (marra)

mara (n class, plural mara)

1. time (used to form adverbial numbers, as in "one time" (i.e. once))

• See Appendix:Swahili numbers#Adverbial numbers.

From Old Norse mara, from Proto-Germanic *marǭ; cognate to Old English mare or mære.

mara c

1. a mythological creature blamed for giving people nightmares

Contraction of maraton.

mara c

1. short for maratonlopp; a marathon race

• (North Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈmara/
• (South Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈmaːra/, /ˈmara/

mara

1. Nasal mutation of bara (“bread”).