imago
- n (psychoanalysis) an idealized image of someone (usually a parent) formed in childhood
- n an adult insect produced after metamorphosis
- The egg of a butterfly grows into a larva, and the larva converts itself into a pupa all bound up in its chrysalis, and finally the bright winged imago emerges.
- When a pupa breaks the surface, the male tears open the pupa case and mates with the still-soft imago before it has fully emerged.
- Actor Boone, in trying to evoke the warrior imago, at times seems less a man than a mannerlike Paladin, the sixgun-slinger he plays on TV's Have Gun, Will Travel, he shoots .