Meaning & use
egghead
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountableinformaldisapproving
An informal, often mocking word for a clever, highly educated person who is thought to care more about ideas than about ordinary life.
Grammar: Countable: use an or an, and the plural eggheads.
Patterns
- call someone an egghead
- a group of eggheads
His classmates called him an egghead because he always had his nose in a book.
The newspaper described the committee as a bunch of eggheads who never met ordinary people.
She laughed and said, 'Fine, I'm an egghead — but at least I passed the exam.'
nouncountableinformaldisapproving
A person who works with ideas in a university or research job, especially one seen as out of touch with practical matters.
Grammar: Countable; often used in the plural to talk about a group of such people.
Patterns
- a government of eggheads
- the eggheads in charge
Critics said the reform was designed by eggheads who had never run a business.
He spent twenty years as an egghead at a research institute before entering politics.
Word forms
| plural | eggheads |
|---|
Common combinations
- a bunch of eggheads
- The plan was dismissed as the work of a bunch of eggheads.
- call someone an egghead
- Don't call your professor an egghead to her face.
- a real egghead
- My uncle is a real egghead — he reads physics for fun.
- the eggheads in charge
- Voters blamed the eggheads in charge for the confusion.
- an egghead professor
- The article mocked an egghead professor who couldn't fix his own car.
Synonyms and how they differ
- intellectual
- Neutral or approving; it simply describes someone who thinks deeply, without the mockery that egghead carries.
- brain
- Informal and usually admiring rather than mocking, as in 'she's the brain of the team'.
- nerd
- Focuses on someone's obsessive interests rather than education, and is often used by young people.
- boffin
- Mainly British and informal; it refers to a scientist or technical expert, often with mild teasing.
Word family
- eggheaded adjective
- Informal and rare; describes someone or something as overly intellectual or bookish.
Commonly confused: egghead or airhead? egghead or blockhead?
egghead vs airhead
An airhead is a silly, forgetful person, almost the opposite of an egghead. Both end in -head, which is why learners mix them up.
egghead vs blockhead
A blockhead is a stupid person, while an egghead is a clever one. The shared ending -head causes confusion.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'egghead' in the most natural way?
Choose one answer.
'Eggheads' here means clever, scholarly people, which fits the mocking tone of 'dismissed'. Option 0 fails because an egghead is a person, not a skill or a score; option 2 confuses the word with a literal egg; option 3 confuses it with a headache.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “egghead”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.