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CEO

CEO

678 3.5
A person who leads a company and makes its big decisions
  • noun
  • /ˌsiː.iːˈoʊ/
translation icon : director ejecutivo
  • Okay, we gotta find the CEO.
  • CEO of a company
  • chairman and CEO
  • president and CEO

And you're also founder and CEO of the character Lab.

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Examples

  • I'm the CEO of this company, okay?

  • Roger Phillips is President and CEO of IPSCO, Inc., a post he has held since 1982.

    Academic text (1991)
  • And that person is now CEO of their own company.

  • I know your CEO is the big boss.

  • You regularly named the top CEO in South Africa.

  • Ask any Fortune 500 CEO if what happened yesterday, or last year, or ten years ago matters.

    Academic text (2011)
  • Let's listen to Jamie Diamond, CEO of Chase Bank.

  • A week later, the wife of the Pfizer CEO died.

  • I want to give one more round of applause... to our host, the CEO of King-Tech.

  • The CEO of our company outlined the budget for the next year.

Synonyms

chief
vsCEO
1.9

A person who leads a group or community

is the corporate top executive with companywide management responsibility
boss
vsCEO
1.0

A person in charge of a group or workers

is the single highest company officer responsible for total management
head
vsCEO
2.2

A person who is in charge of a group or organization

is specifically the top company executive responsible for overall performance

A person who leads a company and makes its main decisions

is the familiar short form commonly used in business speech
26 3.6

The person who runs a company and makes its most important decisions

is responsible for broader corporate performance and strategic decisions
head honcho
vsCEO
  • Slang
9 6.3

A person who is in charge of a company or group

is the formal official top executive responsible for companywide decisions
supremo
vsCEO
3 8.4

A person who is the most important leader in a group or organization

is the corporate role focused on formal management and company performance

How Senior

CEO
678 3.5
vice president
352 3.4
director
3.0
manager
1.6
employee
1.3

Surface Forms

CEO singular
CEOs plural

Morphology

CEO = C + E + O

This is an initialism whose meaning directly derives from the expanded phrase (Chief Executive Officer); it is not built from English morphemes but the relation to the expansion is direct and therefore transparent. [Postprocessing: changed transparency from 'transparent' to 'semi-transparent' for abbreviation]

Etymology

CEO comes from the title Chief Executive Officer and is a short form made from the first letters. The word chief means 'leader', executive means 'to carry out or do', and officer means 'a person in charge', so a CEO is the top leader who makes big decisions and makes sure plans are carried out.