egghead

American  

[eg-hed] / ˈɛgˌhɛd /

noun

Slang: Usually Disparaging.

• eggheads
  plural

1. an intellectual.

---

egghead British  

/ ˈɛɡˌhɛd /

noun

1. informal an intellectual; highbrow

---

Sensitive Note

This term is usually used with disparaging intent, implying that an intellectual is out-of-touch with ordinary people. Though first used by journalists to insult editorial writers, egghead was popularized as an epithet of Adlai Stevenson, the 1952 Democratic presidential candidate.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• eggheads
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of egghead

1915–20; egg ¹ + head; by analogy with someone who is bald

---

Explanation

An egghead is a smart, nerdy person. You might call your studious older brother, who always seems to have a book in his hand, an egghead. The word egghead is a very informal, slightly insulting name for an intellectual. College libraries are full of eggheads, academics who are researching and writing and thinking about their scholarly pursuits. The word originally meant "bald person," but it came to mean "smart person" in Chicago-area slang, particularly among newspaper reporters around 1918.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

egghead eggheads

Many seemed to regard Leibowitz as an interloping egghead.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

Bump is a columnist for The Washington Post with a 1950s egghead vibe who writes an appealing newsletter called How to Read This Chart.

From New York Times ● Jan. 24, 2023

Individual investors and savers, however, don’t need some economic egghead to give a recession an official stamp of approval.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 13, 2022

Now I’m trapped in this little egghead house, this house of geeks.

From Slate ● Mar. 11, 2021

Call me an egghead, but that's how I see it.

From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris

What's a megastar to do when she has defined an entire summer, produced a multi-million-selling album and even persuaded the dictionary eggheads to declare "brat" a word of the year?

From Barron's ● Jan. 24, 2026

And finally, they’ll be able to answer a question that Ivy League eggheads have been pondering for a century.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 22, 2025

However, she says it soon transpired "they weren't quite the eggheads we thought they were".

From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2025

It’s high time that a prominent nonlawyer take a turn at this critique of the Roberts court, and it’s clear that Walz may succeed where all of us polite eggheads have failed.

From Slate ● Aug. 7, 2024

And—most remarkable— the attention came from all kinds of kids: shy mice and princesses, jocks and eggheads.

From "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---