CHIMERA

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Chimera mean? 

• CHIMERA (noun)
  The noun CHIMERA has 2 senses:

1. (Greek mythology) fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head and a goat's body and a serpent's tail; daughter of Typhon

2. a grotesque product of the imagination

  Familiarity information: CHIMERA used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHIMERA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(Greek mythology) fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head and a goat's body and a serpent's tail; daughter of Typhon

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Chimaera; Chimera

Hypernyms ("Chimera" is a kind of...):

mythical creature; mythical monster (a monster renowned in folklore and myth)

Domain category:

Greek mythology (the mythology of the ancient Greeks)

Derivation:

chimeral; chimerical (being or relating to or like a chimera)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A grotesque product of the imagination

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

chimaera; chimera

Hypernyms ("chimera" is a kind of...):

imagery; imagination; imaging; mental imagery (the ability to form mental images of things or events)

Derivation:

chimeral; chimeric (being or relating to or like a chimera)

chimerical (produced by a wildly fanciful imagination)

 Context examples 

AUH is thus a bifunctional chimera between RNA binding and metabolic enzyme activity.

(AU RNA Binding Protein, NCI Thesaurus/LocusLink)

A partial congenic mouse with background strain of C57BL/6 and 129/Sv chimera, containing a heterozygous or homozygous p53 mutation.

(B6.129-Trp53tm1Brd N5, NCI Thesaurus)

A DNA/RNA chimera comprised of a single-stranded DNA molecule covalently bound to an internal guanosine of a RNA molecule.

(Multicopy Single-stranded DNA, NCI Thesaurus)

During the intervening period I had no time to nurse chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adele excepted.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The IL13-zetakine consists of an extracellular IL-13 E13Y mutein-human IgG4 hinge-Fc chimera fused to human cytoplasmic CD3-zeta via the transmembrane domain of human CD4.

(Allogeneic IL13-Zetakine/HyTK-Expressing-Glucocorticoid Resistant Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes GRm13Z40-2, NCI Thesaurus)

There have been eccentric inventors, starving their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

A proprietary DNA-based cancer vaccine that encodes a melanoma antigen tyrosinase-related protein 2 (TRP2) cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitope and a modified monoclonal antibody, a chimera of human IgG1/murine IgG2a with T cell mimotopes expressed within the complementarity-determining regions (CDR) of the antibodies, with potential immunostimulating and antineoplastic activities.

(Melanoma TRP2 CTL Epitope Vaccine SCIB1, NCI Thesaurus)

These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

As I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)