egg
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "egg", 3-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 "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 "egg" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
egg is aEnglishnoun. It means: An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, housing the embryo within a membrane or shell during its development. Pronounced /ˈɛɡ/. It ranks #3,227 in English word frequency. Often confused with ex and et.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | egg |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɛɡ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,227 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for egg is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɛɡ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,227 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 19 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for egg in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ex", "et", "EU", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English eg, egg, egge (“egg of a domestic or wild fowl; egg of a snake”) [and other forms] (originally Northern England and Northeast Midlands), from Old Norse egg (“egg”), from Proto-Germanic *ajją (“egg”) (by Holtzmann’s la… 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 egg, spelled E-G-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, housing the embryo within a membrane or shell during its development.
- 2An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, housing the embryo within a membrane or shell during its development.
- 3An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, housing the embryo within a membrane or shell during its development.
- 4Synonym of ovum (“the female gamete of an animal”); an egg cell.
- 5A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 6A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 7A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 8A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 9A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 10A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
- 11Senses relating to people.
- 12Senses relating to people.
- 13Senses relating to people.
- 14Senses relating to people.
- 15Senses relating to people.
- 16Senses relating to people.
- 17Senses relating to people.
- 18Something regarded as containing a (usually bad) thing at an early stage.
- 19One of the blocks of data injected into a program's address space for use by certain forms of shellcode, such as "omelettes".
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English eg, egg, egge (“egg of a domestic or wild fowl; egg of a snake”) [and other forms] (originally Northern England and Northeast Midlands), from Old Norse egg (“egg”), from Proto-Germanic *ajją (“egg”) (by Holtzmann’s law), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ōwyóm (“egg”), probably from *h₂éwis (“bird”), from *h₂ew- (“to consume”). Doublet of huevo, oeuf, and ovum. Cognates Cognate with North Frisian ai (“egg”), Saterland Frisian Oai (“egg”), West Frisian aai, aei (“egg”), Bavarian Oa (“egg”), Dutch ei (“egg”), German Ei (“egg”), German Low German Ai, Ägg (“egg”), Limburgish ei, Éï (“egg”), Luxembourgish Ee (“egg”), Mòcheno oi (“egg”), Vilamovian e (“egg”), Yiddish איי (ey, “egg”), Danish æg (“egg”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk egg (“egg”), Swedish ägg (“egg”), Crimean Gothic ada (“egg”); also Breton vi (“egg”), Cornish oy (“egg”), Welsh wy (“egg”), Latin ōvum (“egg”), Greek αβγό (avgó), αυγό (avgó, “egg”), Albanian vo (“egg”), Belarusian and Russian яйцо́ (jajcó, “egg”), Bulgarian яйце́ (jajcé, “egg”), Czech vejce (“egg”), Macedonian јајце (jajce, “egg”), Polish jajo (“egg”), Serbo-Croatian ја́јце, jájce (“egg”), Slovak vajce (“egg”), Slovene jájce (“egg”), Ukrainian яйце́ (jajcé, “egg”), Ossetian айк (ajk), айкӕ (ajkæ, “egg”), Armenian ձու (ju, “egg”), Northern Kurdish hêk (“egg”), Southern Kurdish خا (xa, “egg”), Zazaki hak (“egg”), Pashto هګۍ (hagë́y), ويه (wë́ya, “egg”), Persian خاگ (xâg), خایه (xâye, “egg”). The native English ey [and other forms] (plural eyren) (obsolete), from Old English ǣġ, is also derived from Proto-Germanic *ajją. It survived into at least c. 16th century before being fully displaced by egg. The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #3,227 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: