June 30: Spitting Image

My wife listens to NPR a lot on her drive home from work. Today, she shared with me some of the content in which the discussion focused on the term "spitting image". Now, we've all heard this term, and I, personally, have always took it to mean that someone looks exactly like someone else; for example, "you're the spitting image of your Mother". According to this particular segment on NPR, my wife explained that this person's particular theory is that the term derived from the South and is a abbreviated version of "spirit" and "image" together; meaning that one has the same spirit and physically resembles another. I did a little bit of digging into the topic, seeing my thirst for knowledge this year. I did find one interesting reading that coincides with what my wife heard on the radio, however, dictionary.com disagrees with this origin, as does WikiAnswers and RandomHouse. All of these sites buy into the theory of "spit" and "image", with spit being used in the sense of "You are the very spit of your father," i.e., he might just have spit you out. So, although I was unable to find a definitive origin to the term "spitting image", I did learn that there are many theories as to where this term came from; something I had no idea about when I awoke this morning. I'm slowly learning that's the great thing about knowledge....it's everywhere and it's readily available if you just acknowledge it.