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''psyche'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''psyche'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

psyche - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

psyche (plural psyches)

  • The human soul, mind, or spirit.
    • ✤ I’ve been driving in L.A./And the world, it feels too big/Like a floating ball that’s bound to break/Snap my psyche like a twig1
    • ✤ We feel we have been victimised over the centuries. It’s part of our psyche – underneath it all we side with the underdog.”2
  • (chiefly psychology) The human mind as the central force in thought, emotion, and behavior of an individual.
  • A small white butterfly, Leptosia nina, family Pieridae, of Asia and Australasia.

Noun

psyche (uncountable)

  • Abbreviation of psychology.

Interjection

psyche

  • (colloquial) Alternative form of psych.

Verb

psyche (third-person singular simple present psyches, present participle psyching, simple past and past participle psyched)

  • Alternative form of psych.

Etymology 1

Learned borrowing from Latin psychē, itself a borrowing from Ancient Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ, “soul”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: sī’kē
    • (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA: /ˈsaɪ.ki/
      • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
      • Audio (Austin, Texas): 🔊
    • (Australian) IPA: /ˈsɑe.ki/
    • (New Zealand) IPA: /ˈsaɪ.ki/, [ˈsɑe̯.ki]

Etymology 2

Shortened form of psychology, from French psychologie, from Latin psychologia, from Ancient Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ, “soul”) and -λογία (-logía, “study of”)

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈsaɪk/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -aɪk

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2022 January 28, Em Beihold, Nick Lopez, Dru DeCaro, “Numb Little Bug”, in Egg in the Backseat ‎, performed by Em Beihold: ↩

  2. 2023 November 20, Rory Carroll, Lisa O’Carroll, “‘It’s part of our psyche’: why Ireland sides with ‘underdog’ Palestine”, in The Guardian ‎, →ISSN: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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