chimera

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The Word of the Day for March 11 is:

chimera   \kye-MEER-uh\   noun

     1 : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
    *2 : an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable 
dream

Example sentence:
     Jared decided to leave the company upon realizing that his hopes for 
advancement were merely a chimera.

Did you know?
     In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a fearsome, fire-breathing monster 
with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a dragon's tail. She terrorized the 
people of Lycia until their king, Iobates, asked the hero Bellerophon to slay 
her. Iobates had an ulterior motive; his son-in-law wanted Bellerophon killed 
and the king was sure the Chimera would do the job. But Bellerophon called in 
Pegasus, the winged horse, and brought the Chimera down from above. The beast 
lived on in people's imaginations, and English speakers adopted her name for 
any similarly grotesque monster, or, later, for anything fanciful.

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.





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