Myth & LegendGreek → English
Chimera
/kaɪˈmɪərə/noun
A fire-breathing monster made of parts of different animals, an impossible hope, or an organism carrying two distinct sets of cells.
The Greek roots
χίμαιρα
chímaira
she-goat
Literally: “young she-goat”
Follow a root:χίμαιρα1 word
The story of the word
The name simply means she-goat, from χίμαρος, an animal that has lived through one winter, χειμών. Homer describes the creature as lion in front, goat in the middle, snake behind, and Bellerophon killed it from the back of Pegasus. Biology took the word in the twentieth century for an organism grown from two fused embryos, so a chimera is now a laboratory fact as well as an impossible thing.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chimericalchimeric
In a sentence
Full agreement by Friday was a chimera and everyone knew it.