Word.ws English Dictionary

egger-on

egger-on is the agent noun of egg on.

Meaning of egg on

Verb

egg on (third-person singular simple present eggs on, present participle egging on, simple past and past participle egged on)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To encourage or coax (a person) to do something, especially something foolhardy or reckless.
    • The Neatreſſe longing for the reſt, did egge him on to tell / How faire ſhe vvas, and vvho ſhe vvas.1586, William Warner, “The Fourth Booke. Chapter XX.”, in Albions England. Or Historicall Map of the Same Island: […], London: […] George Robinson [and R. Ward] for Thomas Cadman, […], →OCLC, page 86
    Synonyms:
    provoke

Forms of egger-on

pluraleggers-on

Origin of egger-on

From egg on + -er.

Questions about egger-on

What is egger-on the agent noun of?
Egger-on is the agent noun of egg on.

Words near egger-on in the dictionary

  1. Eggemeyer
  2. Eggemeyers
  3. Eggenburgian
  4. egger
  5. Egger Island
  6. egger-on
  7. egger-oner
  8. eggeries
  9. eggers
  10. eggers-on
  11. Eggert

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: egger-on (page history and authors); egg on (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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Cite this entry: “egger-on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/egger-on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.