spitting image
nounEtymology
An alteration of the earlier spitten image (see spitten). A popular folk etymology explains this phrase as deriving from the idea of a father spitting out a child whole from his mouth, as if giving birth. But spitten image actually developed from spit and image, where spit in this context means “likeness”. Terban further suggests a derivation of this sense of spit from the word spirit, but evidence for this is lacking. Another theory is that the idiom is Biblical, after an image of God spitting into dry earth to make the clay out of which Adam would be formed.
Definitions
The exact likeness (of someone)
The exact likeness (of someone); a speaking or living image.
- You're the spitting image of my brother.
- I swear my grandson is the spitting image of my Jeffrey when he was a baby.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for spitting image. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA