Month: February 2026

Q: I am wondering how chimera has come to mean both “an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts” and “an unrealizable dream.”

A: When “chimera” originally appeared in ancient Greece as χίμαιρα (khimaira), it also had two meanings—a female goat as well as a monster. In its farming sense, χίμαιρα was simply the female version of a male goat, χίμαρος (khimaros).

In the Iliad, which dates from the seventh century BC, Homer describes the monster as πρόσθε λέων, ὄπιθεν δὲ δράκων, μέσση δὲ χίμαιρα, δεινὸν ἀποπνείουσα πυρὸς μένος αἰθομένοιο (“in front a lion, in back a serpent, and in the middle a she-goat, breathing out terribly with the might of a blazing fire”).

When Middle English adopted the term in the late 14th century from the Middle French chimère and the Latin chimaera, it was spelled “chymere” and referred to the monster of Greek mythology, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The earliest English citation in the OED is from the prologue of the Wycliffe Bible (early version, 1382):

“Beestis clepid chymeres, that han a part of ech beest, and suche ben not, no but oonly in opynyoun” (“Beasts called chimeras, that have parts of other beasts, exist only in the mind”).

The OED says “chimera” (now pronounced kigh-MIR-uh or kuh-MIR-uh) took on several figurative meanings in the 16th century “with reference to the terrible character, the unreality, or the incongruous composition of the fabled monster.”

In the early 16th century, for example, it came to mean “a horrible and fear-inspiring phantasm, a bogy.” The first Oxford citation for this sense is from an English adaptation of a Latin pastoral poem:

“Agayne [Against] the Chymer [Chimera], here stoutly must he fight.” (From the Fourth Eclogue in The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas, by Alexander Barclay, based on a 15th-century Latin poem by the Carmelite monk Baptista Mantuanus.)

In the late 16th century, the OED says, the term took on another figurative sense: “an unreal creature of the imagination, a mere wild fancy; an unfounded conception.” The dictionary describes this sense as “the ordinary modern use.”

The first Oxford citation is from an English translation of Philippe de Mornay’s French defense of Christianity: “How could that Chymera haue come in any mannes mynd?” From A Woorke Concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1587), by Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding.

(Golding finished the translation the year after Sidney, a poet, scholar, and soldier, was fatally wounded at the age of 31 in a battle with Spanish forces.)

As for the adjectives, “chimerical” appeared in the early 17th century and the less common “chimeric” a couple of decades later.

The OED has two senses for “chimerical” (kigh-MIR-ik-uhl or kuh-MIR-ik-uhl):

“1. Of the nature of a chimera; vainly or fantastically conceived, imaginary, fanciful, visionary” and “2. Prone to entertain chimeras; filled with idle fancies and wild dreams; whimsical, fanciful.”

Here’s the dictionary’s first adjectival citation: “The fire of Purgatory is rightly termed … Chymericall, because a meere fiction.” From A Case for the Spectacles, or, A Defence of Via Tuta, the Safe Way (1638), by the Church of England clergyman and religious controversialist Daniel Featley.

The OED, an etymological dictionary, similarly defines “chimeric” (kigh-MEHR-ik or kuh-MEHR-ik). Merriam-Webster, a standard dictionary that reflects current usage, says “chimeric” is usually used now in two senses in genetics:

“a: relating to, derived from, or being a genetic chimera: containing tissue with two or more genetically distinct populations of cells. ‘Chimeric  mice are generated by mixing cells from two embryos, generating a mouse with four parental contributions’—Nancy L. Nadon [gerontologist].

“b: composed of material (such as DNA or polypeptide) from more than one organism. ‘He combined this gene material with safer human DNA and created what’s known as a chimeric gene—a gene of antibody instructions that is part man, part mouse’—Eric Hand [science journalist].”

Getting back to your question, it’s not at all surprising that a word like “chimera” would develop various figurative meanings. Many other terms from Greek mythology have metaphorical senses in English. Here are some of them: “Achilles’ heel” (a vulnerable point), “mentor” (an experienced adviser), “Pandora’s box” (a source of troubles), and “odyssey” (a long and eventful journey, from the character Odysseus).

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Q: Here’s the title of a post on a blog I follow: “More osculation of religion by the NYT and Free Press.” I’m not aware of this figurative use of “osculation,” but it could be ignorance on my part.

A: “Osculation” is being used here to mean “kissing,” the original sense of the English noun and its Latin ancestor. However, the noun is now used humorously in its kissing sense, or used as a mathematical term for the point at which a pair of curves or surfaces touch.

The evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne, a religious skeptic, is using “osculation” satirically on his website Why Evolution Is True to say The New York Times and The Free Press are kissing up to religion by taking it seriously.

English borrowed the noun “osculation” and the verb “osculate” from Latin in the mid-17th century. Both terms ultimately come from osculum, Latin for a “kiss” (literally, a “little mouth,” the diminutive of os, or “mouth”).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “osculation” as “the action of kissing; a kiss.” The earliest OED citation is from The New World of English Words (1658), by Edward Phillips: “Osculation, a kissing or imbracing.” Phillips was a nephew of Milton and educated by him.

As for the verb, the OED defines it as “to kiss (a person or thing), to salute with contact of the lips.” It labels the usage “now archaic or humorous.” The dictionary’s first example is from a dictionary of difficult words:

“Osculate, to kiss, to love heartily, to imbrace.” (From Glossographia: or, a Dictionary, Interpreting All Such Hard Words, Whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonick, Belgick, British or Saxon, as Are Now Used in Our Refined English Tongue, 1665, by the antiquary and lexicographer Thomas Blount.)

As for the mathematics sense, the OED says the verb appeared first in the 18th century and meant “to touch (another curve or surface) so as to have a common tangent at the point of contact.”

The first citation is from Cyclopædia; or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), by Ephraim Chambers:

“Circle described on the Point C, as a Centre … with the Radius of the Evolute M C, is said to osculate, kiss, the Curve described by Evolution in M; which Point M is call’d by the Inventor [Christiaan] Huygens, the Osculum of the Curve.”

The math sense of the noun appeared in the 19th century. The OED says the noun here refers to “contact of curves or surfaces which share a common tangent at the point of contact.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from An Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus (1816), an English translation of Traité Élémentaire du Calcul Différentiel et du Calcul Intégral (1802), by the French mathematician Silvestre François Lacroix:

“The contact of the highest order which can take place between the tangent curve, and the one proposed, depends on the number of constants which the equation of the former involves, and is also called the contact of osculation.”

Getting back to the original kissing sense, the OED has this 20th-century example of “osculating” from Don’t Tread on Me: the Selected Letters of S. J. Perelman (1987), edited by Prudence Crowther:

“When I asked him once why his hands were so cold he said, ‘They’ve been insufficiently osculated’ ” (from Crowther’s introduction).

Finally, in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, a small toast to the original sense of “osculation”—the opening lines of “As Time Goes By”:

You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh;
The fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.

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