Newsgroups: alt.fan.wodehouse
From: Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 1997/09/11
Subject: Re: Young men in spats

john_...@Carleton.xpam.CA (Green Swizzle Wooster) writes:

> Spatlet as a diminuitive if you like, but to simply call him "Spat"
> would be perfectly etymologically correct.  A spat is a baby oyster....

We should not omit to notice that by equivalence of participles, the
spat may be the ``spitten image'' of his father.  This is the (obscure
but most plausible) etymologically correct version of what now more
often appears in the pullet surprise versions ``spitting image'' or
``spit and image.''  All of this goes back to a fifteenth century
metaphor of a son being as like his father as if the father had spit
him out, or as the French say, ``C'est son pere tout crache.'' I might
expand (in less mixed company) on whether the spit might itself be a
metaphor.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil