chimera

[ki-meer-uh, kahy-] /kɪˈmɪər ə, kaɪ-/
noun, plural chimeras.
1.
(often initial capital letter) a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
2.
any similarly grotesque monster having disparate parts, especially as depicted in decorative art.
3.
a horrible or unreal creature of the imagination; a vain or idle fancy:
He is far different from the chimera your fears have made of him.
4.
Genetics. an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.
Also, chimaera.
Origin
1350-1400; Middle English chimera < Latin chimaera < Greek chímaira she-goat; akin to Old Norse gymbr, English gimmer ewe-lamb one year (i.e., one winter) old, Latin hiems winter (see hiemal), Greek cheimṓn winter
Synonyms
3. dream, fantasy, delusion.
Examples from the web for chimera
  • The surgery-which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera-is widely accepted.
  • Im still researching what the reason for my eye colour is but some of the information is quite scary ie chimera and mosaic dna.
  • The first sight to greet a visitor to the show is a colossal stone chimera, a hybrid of lion and bird, in the museum lobby.
  • EU is a chimera that can't prevent old nations from playing their dices.
  • The search for certainty in empirical knowledge is a chimera.
British Dictionary definitions for chimera

chimera

/kaɪˈmɪərə; kɪ-/
noun
1.
(often capital) (Greek myth) a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent
2.
a fabulous beast made up of parts taken from various animals
3.
a wild and unrealistic dream or notion
4.
(biology) an organism, esp a cultivated plant, consisting of at least two genetically different kinds of tissue as a result of mutation, grafting, etc
Word Origin
C16: from Latin chimaera, from Greek khimaira she-goat, from khimaros he-goat
Word Origin and History for chimera
n.

fabulous monster, late 14c., from Old French chimere or directly from Medieval Latin chimera, from Latin Chimaera, from Greek khimaira, name of a mythical creature, slain by Bellerophon, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail (supposedly personification of snow or winter); literally "year-old she-goat" (masc. khimaros), from kheima "winter season" (see hibernation). Figurative meaning "wild fantasy" first recorded 1580s in English (attested 13c. in French).

Beestis clepid chymeres, that han a part of ech beest, and suche ben not, no but oonly in opynyoun. [Wyclif, "Prologue"]

chimera in Medicine

chimera chi·me·ra (kī-mēr'ə, kĭ-)
n.

  1. One who has received a transplant of genetically and immunologically different tissue.

  2. Twins with two immunologically different types of red blood cells.

chimera in Culture
chimera [(keye-meer-uh, ki-meer-uh)]

A monster in classical mythology who had the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon or serpent.

Note: Figuratively, a “chimera” is a creation of the imagination, especially a wild creation.
chimera in Technology
World-Wide Web
A modular, X Window System-based World-Wide Web browser for Unix. Chimera uses the Athena widget set so Motif is not needed. It supports forms, inline images, TERM, SOCKS, proxy servers, Gopher, FTP, HTTP and local file accesses. Chimera can be extended using external programs. New protocols can easily be added and alternate image formats can be used for inline images (e.g. PostScript).
Version 1.60 is available for (ftp://ftp.cs.unlv.edu/pub/chimera).
(https://unlv.edu/chimera/).
Chimera runs on Sun SPARC SunOS 4.1.x, IBM RS/6000 AIX 3.2.5, Linux 1.1.x. It should run on anything with X11R[3-6], imake and a C compiler.
(1994-11-08)