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Easter egg   /ˈistər ɛg/   Listen
noun
Easter  n.  
1.
An annual church festival commemorating Christ's resurrection, and occurring on Sunday, the second day after Good Friday. It corresponds to the pascha or passover of the Jews, and most nations still give it this name under the various forms of pascha, pasque, pâque, or pask.
2.
The day on which the festival is observed; Easter day. Note: Easter is used either adjectively or as the first element of a compound; as, Easter day or Easter-day, Easter Sunday, Easter week, Easter gifts, Easter eggs. "Sundays by thee more glorious break, An Easter day in every week." Note: Easter day, on which the rest of the movable feasts depend, is always the first Sunday after the fourteenth day of the calendar moon which (fourteenth day) falls on, or next after, the 21st of March, according to the rules laid down for the construction of the calendar; so that if the fourteenth day happen on a Sunday, Easter day is the Sunday after.
Easter dues (Ch. of Eng.), money due to the clergy at Easter, formerly paid in communication of the tithe for personal labor and subject to exaction. For Easter dues, Easter offerings, voluntary gifts, have been substituted.
Easter egg.
(a)
A painted or colored egg used as a present at Easter.
(b)
An imitation of an egg, in sugar or some fine material, sometimes made to serve as a box for jewelry or the like, used as an Easter present.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Easter egg" Quotes from Famous Books



... slipped away and he returned to the beach from a walk through the village. It was early afternoon and the sands were deserted. The sea lay like a great Easter egg under the hot sun, a vast and inanimate daub of glittering blue, green, and gold. He seated himself on the burning sand and stared at it. Years could pass this way and he could sit dreaming lifeless words, the sea like a painted beetle's back, the sea like a shell of water resting ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants of New England had strong sympathies with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... over the cemetery. Once more my interlocutor drew out his cigarette-case, silently offered it to myself, and lighted and puffed industriously at another cigarette. As he did so his hands, as small and brown as the claws of a bird, shook a little, and his head, bent down, looked like an Easter egg in plush. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... your own very self. So you'd better stick to it. You can't be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn't drag God in. You've got one job, and no more. There inside you lies your own very self, like a germinating egg, your precious Easter egg of your own soul. There it is, developing bit by bit, from one single egg-cell which you were at your conception in your mother's womb, on and on to the strange and peculiar complication in unity which never stops till you die—if then. You've got an innermost, integral unique self, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... shortage notwithstand, the Easter egg rolling carnival at Preston, which dates back to mediaeval times, was, after a lapse of four ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various


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