chimeras

Noun

chimera (plural chimeras)

1. Any fantastic creature combining parts from different animals.
   • A voice had called him forth to think in solitude—a voice he durst not resist, the awful one of the future. It fell on John's heart like the mutter of approaching desolation. He heard it coming on, as the spell-bound in a hideous dream await, wordless and shivering, the progress of some chimera...1853, “the O’Hara Family” [pseudonym; John Banim], chapter XV, in The Nowlans, London: Simms and M‘Intyre, Paternoster Row; and Donegall Street, Belfast, →OCLC, page 142
2. (figuratively) A foolish, incongruous, or vain thought or product of the imagination.
   • In the middle of theſe Cogitations, Apprehenſions, and Reflections, it came into my Thought one day, that all this might be a mere Chimera of my own; and that this Foot might be the Print of my own Foot, when I came on Shore from my Boat: This chear'd me up a little too, and I began to perſuade...1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 86
3. (figuratively) Anything composed of very disparate parts.
   • He built his car one piece at a time, producing a chimera with the head of a Volkswagen, the body of a Geely, and the tail of an aftermarket Porsche.

   Synonyms:

   motley crew

4. A grotesque like a gargoyle, but without a spout for rainwater.
   • A chimera is essentially a hybrid animal made up of various animal parts. The famous parapet chimeras on the north tower of Notre Dame in Paris, especially the brooding double-horned fellow with protruding tongue on the west parapet originally assumed to relate to a thirteenth-century model, are...2016, Thomas A. Fudgé, “Gargoyles and Glimpses of Forgotten Worlds”, in Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages (The New Middle Ages), New York, N.Y....
5. An organism with genetically distinct cells originating from two or more zygotes.
   • The DNA test returned a false negative because the killer was a chimera, having absorbed her twin in utero.
6. (figuratively) Synonym of bogeyman: any terrifying thing, especially as an unreal, imagined threat.
   • How could that Chymera haue come in any mannes mynd?1587, Philippe de Mornay, translated by Philip Sidney et al., A Woorke Concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion, page 433

   Synonyms:

   bogeyman

See all 10 meanings of chimera