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Origin and history of ego

ego(n.)

by 1707, in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I); its use is implied in egoity.

They that have pleaded against Propriety, and would have all things common in this World, have forgotten that there is a Propriety, in our present Egoity, and Natural Constitution, which rendereth some accidental Propriety necessary to us (etc.) ["The Practical Works of the Late Reverend and Pious Mr. Richard Baxter," London, 1707]

Psychoanalytic (Freudian) sense is from 1894; sense of "conceit" is by 1891. Ego-trip is attested by 1969, from trip (n.). Related: egoical.

In the book of Egoism it is written, Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity. [George Meredith, "The Egoist," 1879]

also from 1707

Entries linking to ego

I(pron.)

12c., a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek (source also of Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg- "I," nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (source also of Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian aš).

Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, later everywhere; the form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. It began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.

The reason for writing I is ... the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I) whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three iij, etc.), just as much as the pronoun. [Otto Jespersen, "Growth and Structure of the English Language," p.233]

The dot on the "small" letter -i- began to appear in 11c. Latin manuscripts to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-). Originally a diacritic, it was reduced to a dot with the introduction of Roman type fonts. The letter -y- also was written with a top dot in Old English and early Middle English, during the centuries when it tended to be written with a closed loop at the top and thus was almost indistinguishable from the lower-case thorn (þ). In names of U.S. highways (by 1966) it is short for Interstate (adj.).

trip(n.)

"act or action of tripping" (transitive), early 14c., from trip (v.); the sense of "a short journey or voyage" is from mid-15c.; the exact connection to the earlier sense is uncertain. The meaning "psychedelic drug experience" is attested from 1959 as a noun; the verb in this sense is from 1966, from the noun.