Re: Spit
Posted by ESC on March 01, 2000 In Reply to: Spit posted by Tomar on February
29, 2000
: Does anyone know the origin of spitting image, or, failing that,
spitting distance? How did people start using this phrase?
I think spitting distance is self-explanatory. The distance one
can spit. That's a guess.
"SPITTING IMAGE. There is far from complete agreement among students
of language as to whether the 'spit' in this expression comes from
the same root (Anglo-Saxon 'spittan') as the common word meaning
'to eject from mouth.' One authority, claiming that the phrase means
'speaking likeness,' quotes a source dating back to 1602 to support
his claim that the two words are the same. However, one of our early
collaborators on reference books, Harold Wentworth, suggests in
his 'American Dialect Dictionary' a different source. He notes that
the phrase 'He's the very spit of his father' is widely heard in
the South and suggests that 'spit' in this sense is probably derived
from 'spirit.' Nothing that the letter 'r' is often indistinct in
Southern speech, he suggests that the phrase may actually have started
as 'He's the very spirit and image of his father.'" From "Morris
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris
(HarperCollins, New York, 1988).
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