Word of the Day

: November 15, 2023

chimera

noun kye-MEER-uh

What It Means

In Greek mythology, Chimera is a fire-breathing monster that has a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a snake’s tail. In general contexts, chimera can refer to something (such as an aspiration) that exists only in the imagination and is not possible in reality.

// The fantasy is a utopian chimera, but there are real improvements for the town that can be made.

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chimera in Context

“For years, consumer advocates maintained that giving subscribers a la carte options from cable menus instead of the one-size-fits-all model would save people money. Alas, this nirvana has proved to be a chimera. Streaming channels have peeled off from cable lineups and established their own individualized subscription services, with the result that what used to be bundled together in premium tiers are now separate charges.” — Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2023

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.