| 词组 | spitting image |
| 释义 | spitting image The original phrase was spit and image, derived from the use of spit to mean "the exact likeness." This sense of spit, first recorded in 1825, still occurs in British English: • ... was eight months old, bonny and amiable, the dead spit of his father —Mollie Chappell, Annabel, May 1974 The phrase spit and image dates from the late 19th century. Spitting image was first recorded in 1901. (Other variants, now rare, are spitten image and splitting image.) Spitting image was once commonly cited as an error, in dictionaries and elsewhere, but, as Copperud 1970, 1980 notes, it has now established itself as the usual form: • ... the spitting image of her mom —Nancy Anderson, US, 28 Mar. 1983 • I could swear it's the spitting image of the house I saw —David M. Schwartz, Smithsonian, November 1985 Spit and image may continue in occasional use, but our evidence suggests that it is extremely rare. Our most recent evidence for it is from a British writer: • Bert was the spit-and-image of his father —Alan Sil-litoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1958 |
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