Etymologically
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id

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin id (“it”), used to translate German Es “it”,[2][3][4] which Freud used as a noun in Das Ich und das Es (1923), translated as The Ego and the Id.[2][3] Groddeck used es in the same way in Das Buch vom Es (1923), following Nietzsche's use of it for impersonal, instinctual forces.[2] Latin id is from the pronoun stem Proto-Indo-European *i-.[3] It is related to ego.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

1924, in the translation of Freud's collected papers by Joan Riviere and others, according to Barnhart and Etymonline;[2][3] the OED has a first quotation from 1917.[5]

Semantic evolution

In Freudian theory the id is the wholly unconscious part of the psyche, the source of instinctual drives, beside the ego and the superego.[6][7] The word kept this technical sense, and is used more loosely of primitive impulses in general.[8]

Timeline

  • 1917 – OED first quotation.[5]
  • 1923 – Freud's Das Ich und das Es.[2]
  • 1924 – in English, in Riviere's translation.[2][3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. In psychoanalysis, the part of the psyche that is entirely unconscious and is the source of instinctual impulses demanding immediate satisfaction.

Usage notes

ID, short for identification, is a separate word, used for an identity card from 1941 and as a verb, to identify, from 1944.[4][6] In Weismann's theory of heredity an id, from 1893, was a unit of germ plasm,[5][8] and the Muslim festival Eid is also spelled id.[8]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  7. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press