''ego'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

ego - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

ego (countable and uncountable, plural egos)

• The self, especially with a sense of self-importance.
  • ✤ When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego. Ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of I, a sense of self.¹
• (psychology, Freudian) The most central part of the mind, which mediates with one’s surroundings.
  • ✤ In the well adjusted person the ego is the executive of the personality and is governed by the reality principle.²
  • ✤ ‘Everything begins with “I”, you mean. Which is ego,’ said Tom, placing an ankle behind his ear, ‘not id.’³
• A person’s self-esteem and opinion of themselves.
  • ✤ Too many gay people “come out” publicly, yet fail to achieve truly healthy egos. They “adjust” to being less than whole or integrated persons.⁴
  • ✤ My columns in the early days of the Labour government often featured John Prescott, who was in charge of transport as part of a mega-department created to match his ego.⁵
• (anthropology, genealogy) The individual from whose point of view a family tree or pedigree chart is drawn, or the reference point from whom kinship terminology is relative. (Used without the definite article the.)
  • ✤ the cousin of ego on the father’s side

Verb

ego (third-person singular simple present egos, present participle egoing, simple past and past participleegoed or ego’d)

• (transitive, Internet slang) To damage someone’s ego.

Etymology

From Latin ego (“I”). Chosen by Freud’s translator as a translation of his use of German Ich as a noun for this concept from the pronoun ich (“I”). Doublet of I and Ich.

Pronunciation

• (MLE) IPA: /ˈiɡo/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈiːɡəʊ/
  • IPA: (obsolete)/ˈɛɡəʊ/⁶
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (General American) IPA: /ˈiɡoʊ/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːɡəʊ

Printed 2026-07-08.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1998, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: ↩

2. 1954, Calvin S. Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology: ↩

3. 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section I, page 13: ↩

4. 1976 February 7, Philip Gambone, “Coming Out: The Gay Identity Process”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 4: ↩

5. 2024 January 10, Christian Wolmar, “A time for change?… just as it was back in issue 262”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 60: ↩

6. Ross, Alan S. C. (1970), “ego”, in How to pronounce it ‎${}^{[1]}$, London: Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 81. ↩