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easter-egg

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

10 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "easter-egg", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "easter-egg" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "easter-egg" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

Easter egg is aEnglishnoun. It means: A dyed or decorated egg, traditionally associated with Easter and, in the Western European tradition, sometimes hidden for children to find. Pronounced /ˈiː.stəɹ ˌɛɡ/.

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Key facts for Easter egg
PropertyValue
HeadwordEaster egg
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ˈiː.stəɹ ˌɛɡ/
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Easter egg is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for Easter egg is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈiː.stəɹ ˌɛɡ/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for Easter egg in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Easter + egg. Cognate with German Low German Ooosterei (“Easter egg”), Middle High German ōsterei ("Easter egg"; > modern German Osterei). So called because eggs would be eaten during Easter to break the fasting during Lent. (No eggs, dairy, meat excep… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is Easter egg, spelled E-A-S-T-E-R- -E-G-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    A dyed or decorated egg, traditionally associated with Easter and, in the Western European tradition, sometimes hidden for children to find.
  2. 2
    A chocolate confection in the shape of an egg, sometimes with chocolates or sweets inside.
  3. 3
    An undocumented function hidden in a program or video game, typically triggered by a particular input sequence or combination of keystrokes.
  4. 4
    Any image, feature, or other content that is hidden on a video disc or in a movie, trailer, or poster.

Etymology

From Easter + egg. Cognate with German Low German Ooosterei (“Easter egg”), Middle High German ōsterei ("Easter egg"; > modern German Osterei). So called because eggs would be eaten during Easter to break the fasting during Lent. (No eggs, dairy, meat except fish, lard, or foods containing these ingredients could be eaten during Lent.) The computing sense is from the early 1980s, popularized by the video game Adventure.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "Easter egg"?
"Easter egg" is spelled E-A-S-T-E-R- -E-G-G. The IPA pronunciation is /ˈiː.stəɹ ˌɛɡ/.
What does "Easter egg" mean?
As a noun, "Easter egg" means: A dyed or decorated egg, traditionally associated with Easter and, in the Western European tradition, sometimes hidden for children to find.
How do you pronounce "Easter egg"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "Easter egg" is /ˈiː.stəɹ ˌɛɡ/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "Easter egg"?
From Easter + egg. Cognate with German Low German Ooosterei (“Easter egg”), Middle High German ōsterei ("Easter egg"; > modern German Osterei). So called because eggs would be eaten during Easter to break the fasting during Lent. (No eggs, dairy, ... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.