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egg

Pronunciation: /ɛɡ/

The English word “egg” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, often housing an embryo within a membrane or shell during its development.
  2. The (usually) non-developing, edible egg (sense 1.1) of a domestic fowl such as a duck, goose, or, especially, chicken; (uncountable) the contents of such an egg or eggs used as food.
  3. A food item shaped to resemble an egg (sense 1.1.1), such as a chocolate egg.
  4. Synonym of ovum (“the female gamete of an animal”); an egg cell.
  5. A thing which looks like or is shaped like an egg (sense 1.1).
  6. A swelling on one's head, usually large or noticeable, resulting from an injury.
  7. Chiefly in egg and dart: an ornamental oval moulding alternating in a row with dart or triangular shapes.
  8. A score of zero; specifically (cricket), a batter's failure to score; a duck egg or duck's egg.
  9. A bomb or mine.
  10. A would-be spark, especially one created by an overweight spaceship and that leads to a pattern's destruction.
  11. A golf ball.
  12. A person; a fellow.
  13. A white person considered to be overly infatuated with East Asia.
  14. A user of the microblogging service Twitter identified by the default avatar (historically an image of an egg (sense 1.1.1)) rather than a custom image; hence, a newbie or noob.
  15. A person regarded as having not yet realized they are transgender, who has not yet come out as transgender, or who is in the early stages of transitioning.
  16. One's lack of awareness that one is transgender.
  17. A foolish or obnoxious person.
  18. A young person.
  19. Something regarded as containing a (usually bad) thing at an early stage.
  20. One 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.…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.