What Is An EGOT? Lin-Manuel Miranda May Be Next To Win The Grand Slam Of American Entertainment

Chances are, even if you’ve never seen the Broadway rap-musical "Hamilton," you’ve heard of the play's creator: Lin-Manuel Miranda, playwright, rapper, actor, composer and inspirational tweet-writer. After all, Miranda has won several awards for his work. And now he’s up for an Oscar too, nominated for writing best original song in the Disney movie “Moana.”

If he wins, he’ll achieve an accomplishment few can claim: the EGOT. But what exactly is an EGOT?

An EGOT is an acronym for four different types of awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. It's the “grand slam” of show business according to entertainment critics. And only 12 people have ever been honored with the EGOT crown.

Composer Richard Rogers was the first to win the EGOT in 1962. He was one-half of Rogers and Hammerstein, the Broadway writing force behind "Oklahoma!" and "The Sound of Music." Audrey Hepburn secured her EGOT in 1994, a year after she died, after winning the Grammy for a spoken word album. And Whoopi Goldberg became an EGOT winner in 2002, when she scooped up both an Emmy and a Tony.

Other EGOT winners are: Helen Hayes (1977), Rita Moreno (1977), John Gielgud (1991), Marvin Hamlisch (1995), Jonathan Tunick (1997), Mel Brooks (1991), Mike Nichols (2001), Scott Rudin (2012) and Ropert Lopez (2014).

If Miranda wins the Oscar, though, he won’t just have an EGOT. He’ll have a PEGOT, which includes a Pulitzer Prize along with everything else. Miranda already has his Pulitzer, and he’d be one of three to win the honor of PEGOT, joining the ranks of Rogers and Hamlisch.

So, what does it take to win an EGOT? When Goldberg appeared as herself on the sitcom "30 Rock," she gave some advice to fictional entertainer Tracy Jordan:

“You cannot fake your way to an EGOT, fool. You know, all these awards I got, I got for projects I believed in,” she said. “Listen, my point really is, it's got to come from the heart. And then the awards will follow.”