Chimerical
adj ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Of or pertaining to a chimera.
- 2 Being a figment of the imagination; fantastic (in the archaic sense).
"a chimerical goal"
- 3 Inherently fantastic; wildly fanciful.
""You are the most charming person in the world. You are invested with a perfect halo of delight," exclaimed Henrietta. "Miss Churchill has some chimerical notion of honour in her head, but that is over now; your information does not leave a single obstacle in the way of the most perfect happiness that ever wound up a fairy tale..."
- 4 Resulting from the expression of two or more genes that originally coded for separate proteins.
- 5 Impossible to physically produce due to having an impossibly-high saturation or luminosity, but viewable by overlaying an afterimage and a suitably-colored physical image.
- 1 produced by a wildly fanciful imagination wordnet
- 2 being or relating to or like a chimera wordnet
Example
More examples"The constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health."
Etymology
From chimera, from Latin chimaera, from Ancient Greek χίμαιρα (khímaira, “she-goat”). This term entered English in or around 1638.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.