Entertainment / Literature / Composite Monster: (in architecture, often called a chimera after the Greek monster) The term is one mythologists use to describe the fantastical creatures in Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and medieval European legends in which the beast is composed of the body-parts of various animals. For instance, in Greek mythology, the chimera has the body of a lion, tale of a serpent, wings of a bat, and a goat-head, a lion-head, and a serpent's head. Likewise, the sphinx has a lion's body and a woman's head and breasts, the centaur has a horse's body and human torso and a human head where the horse-head should be, the minotaur has a bull's head and a man's body, and the harpy has an avian body and a woman's head, breasts, and arms. Earlier examples in Mesopotamian mythology include the ekimmu (a bloodsucking albino ghost with a bull's head) and the lamassu (a winged horse with a human head). In the medieval period, composite monsters include the formecolion, with an ant's body and a lion's head, the mermaid, with a human top and a fish bottom, and the cockatrice, which mingles parts of a rooster and a serpent. Contrast with additive monster, above. Composite monsters were common in the legends of classical and ancient cultures, but diminished in favor after the Renaissance. Many theories propose to explain the common tendency to create composite monsters. Theories include mistranslation in traveler's tales, in which an animal is describing as having a head like such-and-such a creature, but the simile is lost in translation, the encounter of fossil remnants of extinct animals, or bones found jumbled together and misassembled, and the heraldic practice of dimidiation, in which a nobleman's son might take two animals found on his father's and mother's coats of arms combine them into a composite creature to illustrate his genealogy. An example in 20th century films includes The Fly. In this 1950s horror classic, a fly and a human trade bodies and heads.Cf. Therianthropic and theriomorphic.
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Monster Verb Synonyms: beast, fiend, ogre, giant, dragon, brute, demon, troll, bogeyman
Monster Adjective Synonyms: monstrousness, heinousness, horribleness, horridness, hideousness, awfulness, nightmarishness, dreadfulness, frightfulness, horror, hellishness, ghoulishness, fiendishness, barbarity
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Entertainment / Literature / Additive Monster: In contrast with the composite monster, mythologists and folklorists use the label additive monster to describe a creature from mythology or legend that has an altered number of body parts rather than MORE
Business / Taxes / Dow Jones 65 Composite Average: This composite of three Dow Jones averages tracks the stock performance of 65 companies in two major market sectors and the benchmark DJIA. Those averages are the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), MORE
Technology / Television (TV) / Composite Video Output: The monitor receives only one signal from the computer. The monitor must then decode the signal to determine and separate red, green, blue and sync signals that can then be processed by the monitor. MORE