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Showing results for CEO. Search instead for CEOS.
Synonyms

CEO

American  
Or C.E.O.

abbreviation

  1. chief executive officer: the head of an organization, company, etc.

CEO British  

abbreviation

  1. chief executive officer

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of CEO

First recorded in 1910–15; originally Australian

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“CEOs are not thinking about this in the right way,” said Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic, who is now an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 19, 2026

Abel succeeded Buffett as CEO at year’s end.

From Barron's • Apr. 18, 2026

The company’s stock has risen by more than180% since Hastings stepped down from his CEO role.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 18, 2026

“We are grateful to the Justice Department for rejecting this effort by a prosecutor in Paris to compel our CEO and several employees to sit for interviews,” an xAI official said.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 18, 2026

It was the beginning of a slide that would end just a few months later, in a conference call between Morgan Stanley’s CEO and Wall Street’s analysts.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.