egg

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“

In Italian the yolk of the egg is rosso d'uovo, ` red of the egg. '

—VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VI No 1

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American Heritage Dictionary (11)

noun A female gamete; an ovum. Also called egg cell.
noun The round or oval female reproductive body of various animals, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and insects, consisting usually of an embryo surrounded by nutrient material and a protective covering.
noun The oval, thin-shelled reproductive body of a bird, especially that of a hen, used as food.

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Century Dictionary (32)

The body formed in the females of all animals (with the exception of a few of the lowest type, which are reproduced by gemmation or division), in which, by impregnation, the development of the fetus takes place; an ovum, ovule, or egg-cell; the procreative product of the female, corresponding to the sperm, sperm-cell, or spermatozoön of the male. In biology the term is used in the widest possible sense, synonymously with ovum (which see). In its simplest expression, an egg is a mass or speck of protoplasm capable of producing an organism like the parent, sometimes by itself, oftener only by impregnation with the corresponding substance of the opposite sex; and in low sexless organisms the generative body is indistinguishable as an egg-cell from a sperm-cell. In higher animals which have opposite sexes the egg is usually distinguished from the spermatozoön by its greater relative size and its sphericity. Regarded morphologically, an egg has throughout the animal kingdom one single and simple character, or morphic valence, that of the cell, in which a cell-wall, cell-substance, a nucleus, and a nucleolus are, as a rule, distinguishable. Such an egg is usually of microscopic or minute size; and, however comparatively enormous an egg may become by the addition of other structures, its morphological character as a cell is not altered. Thus, an egg, in its primitive undifferentiated and unimpregnated condition, does not differ morphologically from any other cell of an animal organism, or from the whole of a single-celled animal, nor can the egg of a sponge, for example, be distinguished from that of a woman. Physiologically, however, the egg differs enormously from other cells, in that under proper conditions it may germinate or build up an entire organism like that of the parent. This is usually possible only after impregnation; but the eggs of parthenogenetic insects, as aphids, germinate for several generations without the male element. The parts of an egg may be named in general terms, the same as those used for other cells; but special names are usually applied. Thus, the nucleolus or smallest and inmost recognizable constituent is called the germinal spot or spot of Wagner; the nucleus is called the germinal vesicle or vesicle of Purkinje (in both cases wrongly, because these parts are not specially concerned in germination, and may even disappear after impregnation, the germinal vesicle proper being quite another structure). The common cell-substance or protoplasm is the vitellus or yolk; the cell-wall is the vitelline membrane, sometimes called in human anatomy the zona pellucida. To these regular constituents of an egg may be added others, namely: (1) a large, sometimes enormous, mass of granular colored albumen or food-yolk, as distinguished from the proper formative yolk, as that constituting nearly all the ball of yellow of a hen's egg; (2) a great quantity of colorless albumen, the “white” of an egg. Both the white and the “yellow,” however large in mass, are included in what corresponds to the original cell-wall. But the latter may acquire with its great increase in size a special thickness and toughness, then becoming (3) the egg-pod, putamen, or membrana putaminis; which may be still further thickened and hardened, as (4) the egg-shell, either white or variously pigmented. Thus it is seen that the great size of some eggs, as those of all birds, most reptiles, many batrachians, and some fishes, is due to extraneous substances deposited upon the true egg or egg-cell. This process of inclusion may go still further, the egg, or a mass of eggs together, being enveloped in a glairy substance, egg-glue or oöglæa, as that of frogs' eggs, or encased in variously and often curiously constructed egg-cases. A trace of this is seen in the human egg, where a little granular matter, derived from a Graafian follicle and known as the discus proligerus, surrounds the egg-cell. Eggs the whole of whose yolk is formative, or makes up into the body of the embryo after segmentation of the whole vitellus, are called holoblastic; others, with a quantity of foodyolk which does not undergo segmentation, are meroblastic. All large eggs, as birds', are meroblastic. In these the egg proper is known as the cicatricula or tread; and the tough, stringy albumen which steadies or buoys the yellow in the white forms the chalazæ. The germ-yolk and the food-yolk may occupy different relative positions. (See centrolecithal, ectolecithal, etc.) The organ in which an egg is produced, whatever its size, shape, or position in the body of the female, is the ovary; the passage by which it is conveyed to another part of the body, or to the exterior, is an oviduct. In the former all the essential parts of the egg appear; in the latter various accessory structures, as the white and the shell, are deposited. All sexed animals “lay” eggs; those in which the egg passes directly out of the body, to be hatched outside, are called oviparous; those in which the egg severs its vascular or vital connection with the parent, but remains inside the body to hatch, are ovoviviparous; those whose eggs retain vascular connection with the parent, as by means of a placenta and an umbilical cord, so that they bring forth alive, are viviparous. In the last the oviducts are more or less modified, as into Fallopian tubes, uterus, and vagina, for the purpose of gestation, as distinguished from the incubation of eggs laid outside the body. Egg-laying, as of birds, reptiles, insects, etc., is called oviposition; many insects have the end of the abdomen modified into a special ovipositor. The normal and usual shape of an egg is the sphere, preserved even in some large eggs, as those of turtles; many eggs are cylindrical, with rounded ends; the largest eggs, with a hard chalky shell, as hirds', present a characteristic figure, the ovoid, varying to more or less conical, or elliptical, or subspherical. In such cases the large end is called the butt, the small end the point. All mammalian eggs, excepting those of the oviparous monotremes, are spherical and microscopic; the egg of the human female measures about 1/125 of an inch in diameter. A hen's egg of good size weighs about 1,000 grains, of which the white is 600, the yellow 300, the shell 100. An ostrich's egg holds about 3 pints. The largest known egg is that of the extinct Madagascan elephant-bird, Æpyornis maximus, having a capacity of about 12 dozen hens' eggs, and a long axis of a foot or more. Eggs of many animals besides birds are important food-products, of great economic and commercial value, as turtles' eggs, the roe of many fishes, the coral or berry of lobsters, etc. He eet many sondry metes, mortrewes, and puddynges, Wombe-cloutes and wylde braune & egges yfryed with grece. Piers Plowman (B), xiii. 63. This brid be a bank bildith his nest, And helpeth his eiren and hetith hem after. Richard the Redeless, iii. 42. The largest Eggs, yet warm within their Nest, Together with the Hens which laid 'em, drest. Congreve, tr. of Juvenal's Satires, xi.
Something like or likened to an egg in shape. There was taken a great glass bubble with a long neck, such as chymists are wont to call a philosophical egg. Boyle.
[The egg was used by the early Christians as a symbol of the hope of the resurrection. The use of eggs at Easter has, doubtless, reference to the same idea. Eggs of marble have been found in the tombs of early Christians.]

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In Italian the yolk of the egg is rosso d'uovo, ` red of the egg. ' — VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VI No 1
Terrified to say that the egg is bad, he stammers, "Parts of it are excellent!" — VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol II No 3
In that area there was still a heavy exchange of fire going on whereas in the other places there was only an occasional flash of an energy beam or the brittle chatter of the automatic rifles. — Spoor of the Antis
But the other had danced back, anticipating the attack. — Asimov's Science Fiction
The egg is boiled. — Hayden's Ferry Review Issue 45

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meat · butter · fruit · potato · fish · chicken · food · coffee · cup · seed · soup · dish

Etymologies (5)

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

Middle English egge, bird's egg, from Old Norse egg; see awi- in Indo-European roots.
Middle English eggen, from Old Norse eggja; see ak- in Indo-European roots.

Century Dictionary (3)

from Middle English egge, plural egges, eggis (of Scandinavian origin, from Icelandic egg, etc., below), parallel with Middle English ey, eye, ay, ai, plural eyren, eiren, ayren, eren, etc. (this form, which disappeared in the first half of the 16th century, would have given modern English *ay, riming with day, etc.), of native origin: namely, from Anglo-Saxon æg, rarely æig (in comp. also æger-), plural ægru, = Dutch ei = Middle Low German ei, eig, Low German ei = Old High German ei, plural eigir, Middle High German ei, German ei, plural eier, = Icelandic egg = Swedish ägg = Danish æg = Gothic (Moesogothic) *addjis (?), Crimean Gothic (Moesogothic) ada = Old Irish og, Irish ugh = Gaelic ubh = Welsh wy = Latin ōvum, later ŏvum (later Italian uovo = Spanish huevo = Portuguese ovo = Provencal ov, uov, ueu = Old French oef, French æuf), = Greek ᾠόν, in older forms ω῎ιον, ω῎εον, dial. ω῎βεον, orig. *ὠΝόν (New Greek αὐγον, also ὠόν), = Old Bulgarian jaje (orig. *āvje?) = Bulgarian jajce = Servian Polish jaje = Bohemian vejce = Russian (diminutive) yaitse, an egg. The orig. form of the word is uncertain; not found in Sanskrit, etc.
from egg, n.
from Middle English eggen, incite, urge on, instigate (in either good or bad sense), from Icelandic eggja = Swedish egga, upp-egga = Danish egge, opegge, incite, egg, literally ‘edge,’ from Icelandic egg = Swedish egg = Danish egg = Anglo-Saxon ecg, English edge: see edge, n., and edge, v., a doublet of egg.

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