chimera

noun

chi·​me·​ra kī-ˈmir-ə 

kə-

1

a

capitalized : a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail

b

: an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts

2

: an illusion or fabrication of the mind

especially : an unrealizable dream

a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer

—John Donne

His utopia was a chimera.

3

: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution

A hybrid created through fusion of a sperm and an egg from different species is a chimera.

Did you know?

“In head and shoulders, she was like a lion, / in back and tail, a snake, and in the middle, / a she-goat, and she breathed a dreadful blast / of blazing fire.” So did Homer describe the fearsome Chimera in The Iliad (as translated by scholar Emily Wilson in 2023). The Chimera terrorized the people of Lycia until slain by the hero Bellerophon, but the beast lived on in people’s imaginations, and English speakers adopted her name for any monster similarly composed of the parts of different animals. Later, chimera took on another meaning that is common in today’s lexicon: “an illusion of the mind, especially an unrealized dream.” This sense of chimera is often used to refer to a fantasy or delusion.

Synonyms

• conceit
• daydream
• delusion
• dream
• fancy
• fantasy
• phantasy
• figment
• hallucination
• illusion
• nonentity
• phantasm
• fantasm
• pipe dream
• unreality
• vision

Examples of chimera in a Sentence

Economic stability in that country is a chimera.

a monster in the closet would not have been the first chimera that the boy had seen in his mind's eye

Recent Examples on the Web

The fact is that the subcommittee has wasted nearly a year and a half chasing a chimera. —Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2024

Artists often portrayed these spirits as fantastic beasts and chimeras in paintings and sculptures. —James L. Fitzsimmons, The Conversation, 1 May 2024

His own personal chimera is a return to a lost Eden littered with eaten apples. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 30 Mar. 2024

The team engineered yeast chimeras that had apoptotic enzymes from across the eukaryotic world: from mustard plants, slime molds, humans and the parasite that causes leishmaniasis. —Quanta Magazine, 6 Mar. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Latin chimaera, from Greek chimaira she-goat, chimera; akin to Old Norse gymbr yearling ewe, Greek cheimōn winter — more at hibernate

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

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Kids Definition

chimera

noun

chi·​me·​ra kī-ˈmir-ə 

kə-

: something made up by or existing only in the mind

chimerical

-ˈmer-i-kəl

-ˈmir-

adjective

Medical Definition

chimera

noun

chi·​me·​ra

variants or chiefly British chimaera

kī-ˈmir-ə, kə- 

: an individual, organ, or part containing tissue with two or more genetically distinct populations of cells