chimera

It calls for rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse,” that all-purpose chimera evoked by budget-cutters as a painless way of reducing costs, but which no one ever seems to accomplish.

Also known as a spookfish or chimera, ghost sharks are closely related to sharks and rays.

The fact is that the subcommittee has wasted nearly a year and a half chasing a chimera.

This approach, which involves generating only skin tissue, could help avoid ethical concerns about using human-animal chimeras to produce organs for medical use.

Freud, who catalyzed the study of dreams with his foundational 1899 treatise, would have discounted this as a mere chimera of the wishful unconscious.