Word.ws English Dictionary

egg of Columbus

egg of Columbus noun: a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple after the fact.

Noun

egg of Columbus (plural eggs of Columbus)

  1. A brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple after the fact.

egg of Columbus meaning in Indonesian

egg of Columbus in Indonesian

brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple after the fact
telur Columbus

Forms of egg of Columbus

pluraleggs of Columbus

Origin of egg of Columbus

Referring to an apocryphal story in which Christopher Columbus, having been told that discovering the Americas was inevitable and no great accomplishment, challenges his critics to make an egg stand on its tip. When they give up, he does it himself by tapping the egg on the table to flatten its tip.

Questions about egg of Columbus

What does egg of Columbus mean?
Egg of Columbus means a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple after the fact.
What is egg of Columbus in Indonesian?
Egg of Columbus in Indonesian is telur Columbus. See Egg of Columbus meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is egg of Columbus?
Egg of Columbus is a noun.
What is the plural of egg of Columbus?
The plural of egg of Columbus is eggs of Columbus.

Words near egg of Columbus in the dictionary

  1. egg moons
  2. egg nog
  3. egg nogs
  4. egg noodle
  5. egg noodles
  6. egg of Columbus
  7. egg on
  8. egg on horseback
  9. egg on one's face
  10. egg pasta
  11. egg pastas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: egg of Columbus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-egg of Columbus.wav.

Cite this entry: “egg of Columbus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/egg_of_columbus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.