What to call a very unlikely combination or construction?
In Romanian, there are words and phrases like "struțo-cămilă" (ostricho-camel) or "magaoaie" (donkeysheep). They both designate comical combinations but while the first one can include combinations that can actually work very well (although the journalists are using it mainly to criticise strange combinations), the second one designates a combination or construction something big, ugly, hard to move and unworkable.
Another word is "crocofant" (crocodil+elefant) but that's just a writer's invention and largely unknown.
I'm not looking only for portmanteaus, also two or three word combinations are good. And they don't have to involve animals. There might be a vast number of such words/phrases, therefore the most used are good enough.
Examples:
magaoaie (donkeysheep): A big, old battle cruiser that barely works. It's a structure so it's still a combination of it's parts.
struțo-cămilă (ostricho-camel): "A socialist political party with super-rich leaders" or "A wagon with a steering wheel" or "Privatizing a company by selling it to another state-owned company"
What kind of similar English words or phrases exist?
In America, we "have" the jackalope, a combination of a jackrabbit and an antelope. It is a creature that resembles a rabbit with antelope horns.
It is referred to as :
- a hoax
- a mythical creature
- a legend
jackalope
In a more formal context, it might be termed a "chimera"