egg

Meanings

Noun

• An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, reptiles, insects and other animals, housing the embryo during its development.
• The egg of a domestic fowl (especially a hen) or its contents, used as food.
• The female primary cell, the ovum.
• Anything shaped like an egg, such as an Easter egg or a chocolate egg.
• A swelling on one's head, usually large or noticeable, associated with an injury.
• A Caucasian who behaves as if they were (East) Asian (from being "white" outside and "yellow" inside).
• A foolish or obnoxious person.
• A young person.
• A person, fellow.
• A person who is regarded as having not yet realized they are transgender, has not yet come out, or is in the early stages of transitioning.
• One of the blocks of data injected into a program's address space for use by certain forms of shellcode, such as "omelettes".
• A user of the microblogging service Twitter who has the default egg avatar rather than a custom picture.

Verb

• To throw eggs at.
• To dip in or coat with beaten egg.
• To distort a circular cross-section (as in a tube) to an elliptical or oval shape, either inadvertently or intentionally.
• To encourage, incite.

Related

Similar words

• oeuf

Origin

• From Middle English egge, from Old Norse egg ("egg"), from Proto-Germanic *ajją ("egg") (by Holtzmann's law), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ōwyóm ("egg"). Cognate with Icelandic egg ("egg"), Faroese egg ("egg"), Norwegian egg ("egg"), Swedish ägg ("egg"), Danish æg ("egg").
• The native English ey (plural eyren), akin to Dutch ei (plural eieren) and German Ei (plural Eier) are ultimately from the same Proto-Germanic root, survived into the 16th century before being fully displaced by egg. More at ey. Also a doublet of ovum.
• From Middle English eggen, from Old Norse eggja ("to incite"), from egg.