Talk:ego

Incorrect breve

The text says ĕgŏ; I think that the last o is long. See the Latin page: ego. --84.77.166.228 16:18, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Corrected. En.Wiktionary doesn’t use breves for Latin vowel length marking — only macrons; unmarked vowels are presumed short. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Ego from Latin and Greek

The Freudian Ego indeed comes directly from Latin but the philosophical term of Ego was first introduced by Zeno of Citium in alter ego and then passed into Latin which has also ego as cognate for "I" but not the abstractive definition before Aelios 18:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Your dictionary.com reference states: prob. trans. of Gk állos egṓ, héteros egṓ - another - so it's a translation, not a real borrowing. So what you're basically suggesting is that we split the noun sense in three etymologies, the third one being: "From Latin egō, from Ancient Greek ἐγώ (egṓ). However, at the lexical level this is not a borrowing (because the words are "identical"), but the sense of Latin word egō has been overloaded to support the philosophical meaning. Had the Latin word for 'I' been different, the translation itself would have been a calque, but it's the same and this part bothers me. Your remark might be proper, because the psychological New Latin meaning is itself a calque of German Ich. However, I wonder how would your philosophical meaning of ego look like, and would it coincide with the first definition (the self)? It would be good if you could provide references for such ego. (out of the definition of noun phrase alter ego). --Ivan Štambuk 08:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

1.A translation can be also a kind of borrowing in the semantic field 2.alter ego seems to predates ego 3.I am only propose the histoy of the word to be included; that means Zeno,Cicero and Freud to be mentioned. Aelios 13:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Calques are not treated as borrowings around here.

Once again, can you please specify this philosophical meaning of 'ego' here on the talk page, out of the context of the definition of 'alter ego', and possibly cite it? --Ivan Štambuk 16:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Philosophical or Abstractive Ego is when the simple pronoun takes a wider meaning than simply "I or me"

Apart from calques there is an Ego-phrase directly from Greek into english : Ego eimi[1] Aelios 22:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That kind of figurative meaning of first-person personal pronoun is present in almost all languages. It's silly to trace the Latin overload of 'I' in meaning "self, selfness" to Ancient Greek just because some Greek philosopher seems to be the first to lament about it. You'll have to back up your claims with sources, otherwise they qualify as original research and therefore cannot merit inclusion.

"ego eimi" is unfortunately not English, it's Greek. --Ivan Štambuk 22:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

it's more complicated than just self,selfness Plotinus / The Ego becomes for the first time a philosophical term.[2] [3] and Plotinus borrowed it from the late Stoics page 16 second link (Zeno was the first Stoic and the first who used "Ego-phrase")

ego eimi just like ego sum is used in english phrases untranslated; thus an english phrase even if borrowing

More terms: egomaniac,egopathy,egocentric Aelios 09:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suggest than that you formulate this philosophical definition, outside the scope of psychology and the usual meaning of "self", and add it to the article. --Ivan Štambuk 10:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Well that seems to suits in wikipedia Ego than wiktionary

I only wanted to show that just like in Gen- some are from Latin (genitive) and some of Greek (genetic)

At least a phrase added which is cognate with Greek ego in the etymology section in order to cover the possibility that some ego- came in English through Greek.Aelios 11:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)