chimera

noun

chi·​me·​ra kī-ˈmir-ə How to pronounce chimera (audio)
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.

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 America was a chimera and always had been, a brief interlude of mankind denying its own nature. Elliot Ackerman, WIRED, 8 Feb. 2024 The cells had been absorbed into the surviving twin, effectively creating a blend of himself and his brother – a chimera. TIME, 6 Feb. 2024 Paladini’s imagination ran wild with thoughts of a soybean that dripped blood: a chimera that packed all the flavor of pig meat into a seedling. Matt Reynolds, WIRED, 2 Jan. 2024 In the end, the most likely scenario is that Nintendo decides to pull inspiration from multiple games in a remixed chimera. Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 11 Nov. 2023 The premise of a seamless transition, in which the original author slips off into the afterlife unnoticed, has been replaced by a Frankenstein-like chimera of the living and the dead. Kristen Roupenian, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023 Undeterred, Baric turned to synthetic virology, which is the science of stitching parts of different viruses together into artificial creations known as chimeras. Dan Werb, Time, 11 July 2023 And in 2019, China’s Institute of Zoology invited a Spanish biochemist to create human-monkey chimeras as organ transplant sources. Dov Fox, Foreign Affairs, 25 Apr. 2022 As for the hundreds of thousands who had been afforded the brief joy of watching this funeral from afar and offered the chimera that their memories mattered, they were now supposed to disband and leave governing to the experts. Ariel Dorfman, The New York Review of Books, 31 Aug. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'chimera.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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

Time Traveler
The first known use of chimera was in the 14th century

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Dictionary Entries Near chimera

Cite this Entry

“Chimera.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chimera. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

chimera

noun
chi·​me·​ra kī-ˈmir-ə How to pronounce chimera (audio)
kə-
1
capitalized : a fire-breathing female monster in Greek mythology with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail
2
: 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
: an individual, organ, or part containing tissue with two or more genetically distinct populations of cells

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