chimera

1. 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

   SynonymsChimaera

   Broadermythical monster

   Greek mythology

2. 2.

   a grotesque product of the imagination

   Synonymschimaera

   Broaderimagination

Other forms of chimera

plural

chimeras·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about chimera

What does chimera mean?

chimera means "(Greek mythology) fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head and a goat's body and a serpent's tail; daughter of Typhon". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in chimera?

chimera has 3 syllables: chi-mer-a. The stress falls on "mer". In IPA it is /tʃɪˈmɛɹə/.

What is another word for chimera?

Close synonyms include Chimaera, chimaera. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is chimera a common word?

chimera is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.