Why Do We Call People the Spitting Image?
Picture a child and parent who look exactly alike, to the point where a photo of the parent at the child’s age could be mistaken for a current shot. You might call the child the spitting image of their parent. This idiom, meaning “someone or something that looks very much
like someone or something else,” has murky origins. It most likely dates to the 16th century, when it was said that a child with a strong family resemblance was “spit out of their parents’ mouth.” This concept appears in William Charke’s An Answeare for the Time from 1583: “... as...
