ab ovo
Americanadverb
Etymology
Origin of ab ovo
Literally, “from the egg”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I resolved therefore to begin ab ovo, and giving quarter to no impertinence or absurdity by the way, to clear the ground completely, and leave a perfect rase campagne behind me.
From The Highlands of Ethiopia by William Cornwallis Harris
Not only, then, had antiquity posited in its myths the question of the origin of evil; it had solved it by another myth, in unhesitatingly affirming the criminality ab ovo of our race.
From System of Economical Contradictions; or, the Philosophy of Misery by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon
Instead of being ab ovo ad malum, it was ab malo ad ovum.
From The Castaways by Lolbran Pearse
They commence ab ovo, or, rather, before the egg.
From Custom and Myth by Andrew Lang
Again, of the Paradise Lost: ‘It has the totality of the poem as distinguished from the ab ovo birth and parentage or straight line of history.’
From English Critical Essays Nineteenth Century by Edmund David Jones
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
