Citations:chimera

English citations of chimera

				1719	1818
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1. (Greek mythology) Alternative letter-case form of Chimera (a flame-spewing monster often represented as having two heads, one of a goat and the other of a lion; the body of a goat; and a serpent as a tail).
2. (mythology) Any fantastic creature with parts from different animals.
3. Anything composed of very disparate parts.
4. A foolish, incongruous, or vain thought or product of the imagination.
   • 1719 April 25, [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; having been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account how He was at Last as Strangely Deliver'd by Pyrates, London: Printed by W[illiam] Taylor at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row, OCLC 15864594; 3rd edition, London: Printed by W[illiam] Taylor at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row, 1719, OCLC 838630407, pages 186:

     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 myſelf it was all a Deluſion; that it was nothing elſe but my own Foot; and why might I not come that way from the Boat, as well as I was going that way to the Boat: […]

   • 1818, anonymous [Mary Shelley], chapter II, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, London: Printed for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, →OCLC; republished as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus, new (2nd) edition, volume I, London: Printed for G. and W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria-Lane, 1823, →OCLC, pages 73–74:

     The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.

5. (architecture) A grotesque like a gargoyle, but without a spout for rainwater.
6. (genetics) An organism with genetically distinct cells originating from two zygotes.
7. Usually chimaera: a cartilaginous marine fish in the subclass Holocephali and especially the order Chimaeriformes, with a blunt snout, long tail, and a spine before the first dorsal fin.