Chimerical (kye-MEER-uh-kl) – from the Ancient Greek for “she-goat” – means fantastic; wildly fanciful. In Greek mythology, the chimera (kye-MEER-uh) was a three-headed, fire-breathing monster. It had the body and head of a lion, a goat’s head rising from its back, and a serpent or dragon for a tail.

As used by Arthur Conan Doyle in A Study in Scarlet: “Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed here, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical – so practical that I depend on them for my bread and cheese.”