different between chimera vs nightmare

English

Etymology

From Middle English chimere, from French chimère, from Latin chimaera, from Ancient Greek ??????? (khímaira, “chimera; female goat”), from ??????? (khímaros, “male goat”), from Proto-Indo-European *g?ei-. The Latin form has become more common from the 16th century.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /k???m????/, /k?-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ka??mi???/, /ka??m???/
• Hyphenation: chi?me?ra

Noun

chimera (plural chimeras)

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.
   • 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 […] In Two Volumes, volume I, new (2nd) edition, London: Printed for G. and W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria-Lane, 1823, ?OCLC, page 71:

     It was very different, when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
5. (architecture) A grotesque like a gargoyle, but without a spout for rainwater.
6. (genetics) An organism with genetically distinct cells originating from two or more 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.

Alternative forms

• chimaera
• chimæra

Synonyms

• (fish): ghost shark, rabbitfish, ratfish
• (anything composed of very disparate parts): motley crew

Antonyms

• (anything composed of very disparate parts): monolith

Derived terms

Related terms

• Chimaera
• chimere

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Glossary of architecture

References

Further reading

• chimera (mythology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• chimera (genetics) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Chimaera on Wikipedia.Wikipedia (fish)
• chimera (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• haremic

Italian

Etymology

From Latin chimaera, from Ancient Greek ??????? (Khímaira).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ki?me.ra/

Noun

chimera f (plural chimere)

1. chimera
2. chimera, a kind of shark of the genus Chimaera

English

Alternative forms

• night-mare (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English night-mare, from Old English *nihtmare, equivalent to night +? mare (“evil spirit believed to afflict a sleeping person”). Cognate with Scots nichtmare and nichtmeer, Dutch nachtmerrie, Middle Low German nachtm?r, German Nachtmahr.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?na?t.m??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /na?t.m???/, [n???.m???]

Noun

nightmare (plural nightmares)

1. (now rare) A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep. [from 14th c.]
   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy:

     It haunted me, however, more than once, like the nightmare.

   • 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Black Cat’:

     I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight—an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—incumbent eternally upon my heart!

2. (now chiefly historical) A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; Sleep paralysis. [from 16th c.]
   • 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 209:

     Had been afflicted in the night with that strange complaint called the nightmare.

3. A very bad or frightening dream. [from 19th c.]

   I had a nightmare that I tried to run but could neither move nor breathe.

   • July 18 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises[1]

     With his crude potato-sack mask and fear-inducing toxins, The Scarecrow, a “psychopharmacologist” at an insane asylum, acts as a conjurer of nightmares, capable of turning his patients’ most terrifying anxieties against them.

4. (figuratively) Any bad, miserable, difficult or terrifying situation or experience that arouses anxiety, terror, agony or great displeasure. [from 20th c.]

   Cleaning up after identity theft can be a nightmare of phone calls and letters.

Synonyms

• (demon said to torment sleepers): incubus, succubus, night hag

Related terms

• nightmarish
• daymare

Translations