ego
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ego", 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 "ego" 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 "ego" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ego is aEnglishnoun. It means: The self, especially with a sense of self-importance. Pronounced /ˈiɡo/. It ranks #6,898 in English word frequency. Often confused with ex and et.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ego |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈiɡo/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #6,898 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ego is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈiɡo/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,898 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ego 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: 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. 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 ego, spelled E-G-O, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The self, especially with a sense of self-importance.
- 2The most central part of the mind, which mediates with one's surroundings.
- 3A person's self-esteem and opinion of themselves.
- 4The 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.)
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.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #6,898 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: