Why do we say: “You’ve got egg on your face” when someone’s done something leaving them looking embarrassed or foolish? What is the “egg on your face” origin?
Most sources track the egg on the face phrase back to around the 1940s, making it a relatively new idiom. One of the earliest textual references found was in The Bee (Danville, Virginia), 27 Aug. 1941. But why did it arise?
There are 2 main theories regarding why we say someone’s got egg on their face:
Theory 1: Being Pelted with Eggs
In the low-end of theatre, when a performer was strongly disliked, the rowdy audience would announce their discontent by pelting the performer with things. Anyone who’s seen the Muppets and Muppet Babies may be familiar with the joke-telling bear, Fozzie, who is often pelted with tomatoes when he tells a bad joke. In the theatre, the audience would sometimes throw raw eggs too, so that for a performer, having “egg on the face” was not only embarrassing in itself, but was also embarrassing because it was a sign of their failure in entertaining the audience.
Theory 2: Having accidental food remnants on the face
The second theory is that since soft-boiled egg was a common breakfast dish, it was not unusual to sometimes be caught with accidental runny egg on your face. Having egg encrusting the face is somewhat easier for bearded and moustached men who may not feel its presence, and were therefore more prone to having a decoration of egg embellishing their face in this way for much of the day; an understandable source of embarrassment.
There are other less popular theories suggesting that having egg on the face is almost akin to the embarrassment of being caught red-handed doing something you’re not supposed to be doing. This theory is based on the idea that the farmer’s dogs would sometimes snack on chicken eggs (also known as “egg-sucking”), and would be caught with egg on their faces, marking them as the mischievous culprits.
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