ego
pronunciation
How to pronounce ego in British English:
UK [ˈiːɡəʊ]
How to pronounce ego in American English:
US [ˈiːɡoʊ]
-
- Noun:
- an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others
- your consciousness of your own identity
- (psychoanalysis) the conscious mind
Word Origin
- ego
- ego: [19] Ego is Latin for ‘I’ (and comes in fact from the same Indo-European base as produced English I). English originally acquired it in the early 19th century as a philosophical term for the ‘conscious self’, and the more familiar modern uses – ‘self-esteem’, or more derogatorily ‘selfimportance’, and the psychologist’s term (taken up by Freud) for the ‘conscious self’ – date from the end of the century.Derivatives include egoism [18], borrowed from French égoïsme, and egotism [18], perhaps deliberately coined with the t to distinguish it from egoism. And the acquisitions do not end there: alter ego, literally ‘other I, second self’, was borrowed in the 16th century, and the Freudian term superego, ‘beyond I’, entered the language in the 1920s.=> i
- ego (n.)
- 1714, as a term in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I). Psychoanalytic (Freudian) sense is from 1894; sense of "conceit" is 1891. Ego-trip first recorded 1969, from trip (n.). Related: egoical; egoity. In the book of Egoism it is written, Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity. [George Meredith, "The Egoist," 1879]
Synonym
Example
- 1. Yet more evidence of the oft-cited fragile male ego .
- 2. Less star power might mean less ego and more harmony .
- 3. Another reason is that the ego wants more .
- 4. Whenever you receive an idea from your ego , it feels usual and mostly fear-based .
- 5. We encourage him to do what he can , though unlike us he is without ego or ambition .