Id
/ɪd/noun
In psychoanalysis, the instinctive and unconscious part of the personality driven by basic desires and impulses.
Did you know?Sigmund Freud borrowed the Latin pronoun id from scholarly terminology, contrasting it with the ego and superego in his structural model of the mind.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*i-
“A demonstrative pronominal element meaning “this” or “that,” pointing toward something.”
Proto-Italic
Proto-Italic
*id
“Neuter demonstrative pronoun meaning “it” or “that.””
Classical Latin
Latin
id
“The neuter form of the pronoun is, ea, id: “it” or “that.””
19th Century
German
das Es
“Freud’s German term for the instinctive, unconscious part of the psyche, literally “the it.””
Late 19th–Early 20th Century
English
id
“The English psychoanalytic term adopted from Latin, especially through translations and discussion of Freud’s work.”