lay an egg


1 [eg]
the contents of an egg or eggs: raw egg; fried eggs.
anything resembling a hen's egg.
Also called egg cell. the female gamete; ovum.
Informal. person: He's a good egg.
Slang. an aerial bomb.
verb (used with object)
to prepare (food) by dipping in beaten egg.
egg on one's face, Informal. humiliation or embarrassment resulting from having said or done something foolish or unwise: They were afraid to back the losing candidate and wind up with egg on their faces.
lay an egg, Informal. to fail wretchedly, especially to be unsuccessful in front of an audience: He laid an egg as the romantic hero.
walk on eggs, to walk or act very cautiously.

before 900; Middle English < Old Norse; replacing Middle English ey, Old English ǣg, German Ei egg; akin to Latin ōvum, Greek ōión egg

eggless, adjective
eggy, adjective

Egg, like beg, leg, and other words where “short e” precedes a “hard g” sound, is pronounced with the vowel [e] of bet and let, except in parts of New England and the South Midland and southern U.S., where these words are frequently said with [-eyg] to rhyme with vague and plague, especially in the speech of the less educated. This raising of [e] to a higher vowel [ey] articulated with the upper surface of the tongue closer to the palate, also occurs before [zh] as in measure, pleasure, and treasure. Unabridged
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World English Dictionary
egg1 (ɛɡ)
1.  the oval or round reproductive body laid by the females of birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, and some other animals, consisting of a developing embryo, its food store, and sometimes jelly or albumen, all surrounded by an outer shell or membrane
2.  Also called: egg cell any female gamete; ovum
3.  the egg of the domestic hen used as food
4.  something resembling an egg, esp in shape or in being in an early stage of development
5.  old-fashioned, informal bad egg
 a.  a bad person
 b.  an exclamation of dismay
6.  old-fashioned, informal good egg
 a.  a good person
 b.  an exclamation of delight
7.  slang chiefly (US), (Canadian) lay an egg
 a.  to make a joke or give a performance, etc, that fails completely
 b.  (of a joke, performance, etc) to fail completely; flop
8.  put all one's eggs in one basket, have all one's eggs in one basket to stake everything on a single venture
9.  teach one's grandmother to suck eggs to presume to teach someone something that he knows already
10.  informal with egg on one's face made to look ridiculous
11.  to dip (food) in beaten egg before cooking
12.  informal (US) to throw eggs at
[C14: from Old Norse egg; related to Old English ǣg, Old High German ei]

egg2 (ɛɡ)
vb (usually foll by on)
to urge or incite, esp to daring or foolish acts
[Old English eggian, from Old Norse eggja to urge; related to Old English ecgedge, Middle Low German eggen to harrow]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Word Origin & History

mid-14c., from northern England dialect, from O.N. egg, which vied with M.E. eye, eai (from O.E. æg) until finally displacing it after 1500; both are from P.Gmc. *ajja(m), probably from PIE *owyo-/*oyyo- "egg" (cf. Goth. ada, Ger. ei, O.C.S. aja, Rus. jajco, Bret. ui, Gk. oon, L. ovum). Caxton
She did, however, recognize another customer's request for "eyren." Egg nog is Amer.Eng. c.1775, from nog "strong ale," an E.Anglian dialectal word of unknown origin. Bad egg in the fig. sense is from 1855. To have egg on (one's) face "be made to look foolish" is first recorded 1964. Egg-beater is from 1828; slang sense of "helicopter" is from 1937. Eggshell as emblematic of "thin and delicate" is from 1835; as a color term, it dates from 1894.

c.1200, from O.N. eggja "to goad on, incite," from egg "edge" (see edge).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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American Heritage
Medical Dictionary

egg (ěg)
The female sexual cell or gamete; an ovum.

The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
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American Heritage
Science Dictionary
egg   (ěg)  Pronunciation Key 
  1. The larger, usually nonmotile female reproductive cell of most organisms that reproduce sexually. Eggs are haploid (they have half the number of chromosomes as the other cells in the organism's body). During fertilization, the nucleus of an egg cell fuses with the nucleus of a sperm cell (the male reproductive cell) to form a new diploid organism. In animals, eggs are spherical, covered by a membrane, and usually produced by the ovaries. In some simple aquatic animals, eggs are fertilized and develop outside the body. In some terrestrial animals, such as insects, reptiles and birds, eggs are fertilized inside the body but are incubated outside the body, protected by durable, waterproof membranes (shells) until the young hatch. In mammals, eggs produced in the ovaries are fertilized inside the body and (except in the cases of monotremes) develop in the reproductive tract until birth. The human female fetus possesses all of the eggs that she will ever have; every month after the onset of puberty, one of these eggs matures and is released from the ovary into the fallopian tube, where it is either fertilized or discarded during menstruation. In many plants (such as the bryophytes, ferns, and gymnosperms) eggs are produced by flasked-shaped structures known as archegonia. In gymnosperms and angiosperms, eggs are enclosed within ovules. In angiosperms, the ovules are enclosed within ovaries. See also oogenesis.

  2. In many animals, a structure consisting of this reproductive cell together with nutrients and often a protective covering. The embryo develops within this structure if the reproductive cell is fertilized. The egg is often laid outside the body, but the female of ovoviviparous species may keep it inside the body until after hatching.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
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American Heritage
Cultural Dictionary

lay an egg definition

To fail, or to have one's efforts fall flat: “Jim tried to tell a few jokes, but each time he forgot the punch line and laid an egg.”

egg definition

A female gamete.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Bible Dictionary

Egg definition


Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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American Heritage
Idioms & Phrases

lay an egg

Fail, especially in a public performance; make a humiliating error. For example, Carol really laid an egg last night when she forgot her lines, or, as Variety had it in October 1929: "Wall Street Lays An Egg." The term originated in the late 1800s in vaudeville and was extended to nontheatrical failures in the early 1900s.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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