Date:    Mon, 9 Mar 1998 11:53:25 -0500
<br>From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: Spittin' Image
<br>
<br>At 11:40 PM -0600 3/8/98, Donald M. Lance wrote:
<br> FWIW.  The term 'spittin' image / 'spitten image' has been discussed once,
<br> maybe twice, on ads-l.  The 75th-Anniverary edition of TIME Magazine has
<br> this interesting letter:
<br> 
<br> Oct. 11, 1927
<br> The records on "spittin' image" should certainly be kept straight. I don't
<br> think that the expression has anything to do with saliva. It originated, I
<br> believe, among the darkies of the South and the correct phrasing--without
<br> dialect--is "spirit and image." It was originally used in speaking of some
<br> person whose father had passed on--and the colored folks would say--"the
<br> very spi't an' image of his daddy."
<br> Joel Chandler Harris Jr.
<br> Atlanta, Ga.
<br> 
<br> DMLance
<br>
<br>=46ar be it from me to spit on the spi't of Joel Chandler Harris Jr.
<br>(although doing so on that of his esteemed father would have given me
<br>greater pause), but I don't think this particular reconstruction is much
<br>more than a curious folk etymology (and who better to endorse one than the
<br>grand-nephew, as it were, of Uncle Remus?).  As I noted in those threads to
<br>which Donald Lance refers, the "spit" of "spit and image" has been around
<br>for centuries, first attested in British English, which makes the "darkies"
<br>attribution as unlikely as it is (now) offensive.  Two early OED citations
<br>of the noun:
<br>
<br>   (1690)  We are of our father the devil,...as like him as if spit out of h=
<br>is
<br>             mouth.
<br>   (1788:  Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue)  He is as like his father
<br>             as if he was spit out of his mouth; said of a child much
<br>             resembling his father.
<br>
<br>
<br>"Spit" si, "spirit" no.  My own nomination for the source of "spit and
<br>image"/"spittin' image" itself, first contributed to Linguist on 9/28/93
<br>and to this list on 2/6/96, was the dialectal participle "spitten", as
<br>supported inter alia by the existence of the French counterpart "c'est son
<br>portrait, tout crach=E9."  Thus, "spitten image", reanalyzed (by those
<br>outside the dialect area) as "spit 'n' image" or as "spittin(g) image", or
<br>as "spit 'n' image" later itself reanalyzed as "spittin(g) image" through
<br>another "mishearing". Thus with a loss of transparency the image or copy,
<br>instead of being the object--what was spit out--becomes the subject, as the
<br>original passive/past participle becomes an active/present one.  Donald
<br>himself enlivened the discussion with a related suggestion--
<br>
<br>Could "spitten image" have originated as a reference to ejaculate rather
<br>than to saliva/sputum?   Seems as though I once heard someone offer that
<br>etymology.  Later "transformations" of the term were needed for spitten
<br>images of mothers to occur.            DMLance
<br>
<br>--thereby plausibly accounting for the fact that early citations of both
<br>nominal "spit" (on the 'copy' reading) and "spitVn image" all involve a
<br>child as being the perfect spit (clone?) of the father rather than the
<br>mother.  If this is correct, Harris may be right in his claim that the
<br>"spit" of this construction 'has nothing to do with saliva', but for a far
<br>less "spiritual" reason than the one he offers.
<br>
<br>
<br>Larry
<br>