Ego

How to spell ego

3 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ego

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ego mean?

1. nounA person's sense of their own worth or importance, especially when inflated.
2. nounIn Freudian theory, the part of the mind that mediates between conscious desires and reality.

Ego in a sentence

• The promotion did nothing to shrink his already enormous ego.

• In Freud's model the ego balances the demands of the id and the superego.

• A fragile ego made her bristle at the mildest criticism.

• The lecturer explained how the ego negotiates between instinct and conscience.

Where does ego come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is simply the Latin pronoun ego, which literally means 'I', the word a Roman speaker used to refer to himself. English borrowed it untranslated in the early 1800s, first as a term in philosophy and metaphysics for the self that thinks and experiences. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it broadened into the familiar everyday sense of a person's self-esteem or sense of importance. Its biggest leap came when Sigmund Freud's translators used it for the German 'das Ich' (literally 'the I'), making ego one of the three parts of his model of the mind alongside the id and the superego. Because it is a bare Latin root with no prefix or suffix, the spelling is mercifully short, and its plural follows suit as 'egos'.

How the word is built

• ego (Latin root meaning 'I', the conscious self); an unanalysable single root borrowed whole into English