Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An insect in its sexually mature adult stage after metamorphosis.
  • noun Psychology An often idealized image of a person, usually a parent, formed in childhood and persisting unconsciously into adulthood.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In entomology, the final, perfect stage or state of an insect, after it has undergone all its transformations and become capable of reproduction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An image.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The final adult, and usually winged, state of an insect. See Illust. of Ant-lion, and Army worm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The final developmental stage of an insect after undergoing metamorphosis.
  • noun An idealised concept of a loved one, formed in childhood and retained unaltered in adult life.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an adult insect produced after metamorphosis
  • noun (psychoanalysis) an idealized image of someone (usually a parent) formed in childhood

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin imāgō, imāgin-, image; see aim- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin imāgō.

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Examples

  • In psychoanalysis, the term imago is an unconscious prototype of personae, the imago determines the way in which the subject apprehends others.

    Vertigo: Collecting & Reading W.G. Sebald 2009

  • Certain cells, called imago cells, which served absolutely no purpose in the caterpillar's life up to now, suddenly kick in and take over.

    William Horden: Transformation: Giving Thanks For Our Meltdowns 2009

  • One feature in which the larva often agrees with the imago is the possession on the terminal abdominal segment of a pair of long jointed cerci, and in many genera a median jointed tail-process (see fig. 9) is also present, in some cases both in the larva and the imago, in others in the larva during its later stages only.

    The Life-Story of Insects 1902

  • Their rudiments appear in the embryo, often at a very early stage; they are recognisable in the larva, and the matured structures in the imago are the result of their slow process of growth, the details of which must be reckoned beyond the scope of this book.

    The Life-Story of Insects 1902

  • The problem with both these options is that they do not recognize the implications of technology as a power and will themselves be reconfigured for the ends necessary of what we could half-jokingly call the imago tech rather than the imago Dei.

    Rhett Smith 2008

  • The second mission which involves recovering a lost mind seems even more routine and the narrator tells us that he is especially skillful in such, so imagine his surprise when after making an entrance in the child's mind, he cannot find the boy's "imago".

    Anthology Story Review: A Rich Full Week by KJ Parker (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu) Liviu 2010

  • You don't actually *need* to be told what Scholl's origins are because he's practically the inverse of the "imago" who is actually human.

    Cities adamosf 2004

  • To violate that imago Dei by stripping and freezing him, by slamming him against a wall, or strapping him to a board to nearly drown him again and again and again, to bombard him with noise and light until he loses his mind, to reduce a human being to a mental and spiritual shell — nothing can justify this for a Christian.

    Dear President Bush, 2009

  • The imago dei is a gift from our creator to each one of us, no matter what we accomplish.

    Lillian Daniel: Aging And Happiness: A Lesson From Abraham And Sarah Lillian Daniel 2011

  • Or the imago dei, the image of God, in which each one of us has been beautifully created?

    Lillian Daniel: Aging And Happiness: A Lesson From Abraham And Sarah Lillian Daniel 2011

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