Spitting image vs. spit and image usage trend.. Spitting image is the more modern form of the idiom meaning exact likeness, duplicate, or counterpart.The original phrase was spit and image, but spitting image has been far more common than spit and image for well over a century.. Is It Spitting Image or Splitting Image or Spit and Image? Well, I think it depends on who you ask. Summary. Spitting image is the most usual phrase.. Spitting image and related phrases (e.g. "he's the [very] spit[ting] [image/picture]") are 19th century. It appears it did come from the word spit rather than split.. Its roots may be found in the 17th century, in. He resembled him in euerie part; he was as like him as if he had beene spit out of his mouth.
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Generally, people will use "spitting image" correctly when referring to someone looking almost identical to someone else. Something can be said for the plausibility of "splitting image," though, which shows why it slowly started to develop in usage in the 2000s. Most people still use the original saying "spitting image," but don't. Before we had spitting image there was another version of this unsavory-sounding expression, which was spitten image.Spitten is believed to be a corruption of the words "spit and," as spit formerly had the meaning of "perfect likeness." There is evidence of spit being used in this fashion from the early 19th century:. Meanwhile the defeated lawyer with his fair one had secretly fled to. The meaning of SPITTING IMAGE is someone or something that looks very much like someone or something else —usually singular. How to use spitting image in a sentence. Consider identical twins, after all, who develop from just one zygote that will then split and form two embryos. Despite the greater amount of sense splitting might make, spitting is the correct answer. The Phrase Finder suggests the phrase came into being as a morph from the original spit and image or, perhaps, spitten image.
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Over time, this evolved into the idiom "spit and image," which emphasizes the idea of two people looking similar by adding "image." And this then turned into "spitten image" (with "spitten" either a non-standard past participle of "spit" or possibly a contraction of "spit and"). And, finally, this evolved into "spitting image," which is the most common spelling of. From there, the phrase apparently evolved to spit and image, which may have been misheard enough to become spitten image, which gave way to spittin' image, spitting image, and even splitting image. BE THE SPITTING IMAGE OF SOMEONE definition: 1. to look extremely similar to someone: 2. to look extremely similar to someone: . Learn more. English [edit] Etymology [edit]. Alteration of 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.
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spitting image. Spitting image or spit and image (sometimes reanalyzed as splitting image) stems from the metaphor of spitting out an exact likeness of oneself. The metaphor appears as early as 1602 when Nicholas Breton writes in his book Wonders Worth Hearing, "twoo girles, [.] the one as like an Owle, the other as like an Urchin, as if. The term "spitting image" has evolved from "spit and image." In this saying, the word "spit" means a copy. It stems from the idea of creating a copy of a person by spitting, like an oral birthing or a clone. This notion has been in circulation since at least the late 17th century as evidenced by its use in Irish dramatist George Farquhar 's.
The theory has its adherents and dates back to at least 1939, when Dorothy Hartley included it in her book Made in England: "Evenness and symmetry are got by pairing the two split halves of the same tree, or branch. (Hence the country saying: he's the 'splitting image' - an exact likeness.)" As so often though, plausibility isn't the end of. A: You are correct. This is one of the only places (please take note, sportspeople) when spitting is completely acceptable. Q: That's what I thought. So is this a common mistake? A: Yes, it is, because for a lot of people, to "split" an image makes far more sense here than to "spit" it.
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The spitting image is a colloquial expression, and the very image is a more "high-hat" or literary expression. They are interchangeable in terms of meaning, but you might prefer one or the other in a particular situation due to considerations of style. Citing a street conversation, you might choose "the spitting image", writing a romantic poem. Definition of the spitting image of in the Idioms Dictionary. the spitting image of phrase. What does the spitting image of expression mean? Definitions by the largest Idiom Dictionary.. The 19-year-old singer, left, who recently split from big-nosed "model" Jodie Marsh, thinks he's the spitting image of Babyshambles star Pete Doherty, below.
