egg

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A female gamete; an ovum. Also called egg cell.
2. n. 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.
3. n. The oval, thin-shelled reproductive body of a bird, especially that of a hen, used as food.
4. n. Something having the ovoid shape of an egg.
5. n. Slang A fellow; a person: He's a good egg.
6. v. To cover with beaten egg, as in cooking.
7. v. Slang To throw eggs at.
8. idiom. egg on (one's) face Informal Embarrassment; humiliation: If you do that, you'll end up with egg on your face.
9. idiom. lay an egg Informal To fail, especially in a public performance.
10. idiom. put Informal To risk everything on a single venture.
11. v. To encourage or incite to action. Used with on: The racing fans egged their favorites on.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. 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: 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; 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 the egg-pod, putamen, or membrana putaminis; which may be still further thickened and hardened, as 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.
2. n. Something like or likened to an egg in shape.
3. n. [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.]
4. To apply eggs to; cover or mix with eggs, as cutlets, fish, bread, etc., in cooking.
5. To pelt with eggs.
6. To incite or urge; encourage; instigate; provoke: now nearly always with on.
7. n. In cricket, no score; zero; a duck's egg.

Wiktionary

1. v. To encourage, incite.
2. n. zoology, countable An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, snakes, insects and other animals housing the embryo during its development.
3. n. countable The egg of a domestic fowl as an item of food.
4. n. uncountable The contents of one or more (hen's usually) eggs as a culinary ingredient, etc.
5. n. biology, countable The female primary cell, the ovum.
6. n. Something shaped like an egg, such as an Easter egg or a chocolate egg.
7. n. A swelling on one's head, usually large or noticeable, associated with an injury.
8. n. mildly pejorative, slang, ethnic slur , (potentially offensive) A person of Caucasian (Western) ancestry, who has a strong desire to learn about and immerse him- or herself in East Asian culture, and/or such a person who is perceived as behaving as if he or she were Asian (from the "white" outside and "yellow" inside).
9. n. New Zealand (pejorative) A foolish or obnoxious person.
10. n. In terms such as good egg, bad egg, tough egg etc., a person, fellow.
11. v. To throw eggs at.
12. v. To dip in or coat with beaten egg (cooking).
13. v. To distort a circular cross-section (as in a tube) to an elliptical or oval shape, either inadvertently or intentionally.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Popularly) The oval or roundish body laid by domestic poultry and other birds, tortoises, etc. It consists of a yolk, usually surrounded by the “white” or albumen, and inclosed in a shell or strong membrane.
2. n. (Biol.) A simple cell, from the development of which the young of animals are formed; ovum; germ cell.
3. n. Anything resembling an egg in form.
4. v. To urge on; to instigate; to incite�

WordNet 3.0

1. n. one of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens
2. n. oval reproductive body of a fowl (especially a hen) used as food
3. n. animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum or embryo together with nutritive and protective envelopes; especially the thin-shelled reproductive body laid by e.g. female birds
4. v. throw eggs at
5. v. coat with beaten egg