Kieran in Huntsville, Alabama, wonders about the term laid an egg meaning performed badly. The expression to lay an egg goes back at least as far as cricket matches in the 1860s, where duck’s egg referred to a zero on a scoreboard. Later in the United States, the term goose egg denoted the same thing. The metaphor was extended to the notion of laying an egg, and not just any egg, but a rotten one, suggesting a performance was bad. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Lay an Egg Origins and Meaning”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi.
Yeah, my name’s Kieran Byrne, and I’m calling from Huntsville, Alabama.
How can we help you today?
So I was playing a doubles match a couple weeks ago, and we went out on Saturday morning, and me and my doubles partner got creamed. His name’s Wunchak. So we’re walking off the court, and I said to him, because he played terrible, man, you really laid an egg. And he said, what does that mean? And I said, well, it means you were terrible. And he said, yeah, but, you know, where does that come from? So I’m kind of calling on behalf of One Shack and asking, where did that come from? So doubles tennis and a guy named One Shack.
So you told him that he really laid an egg when he performed poorly at tennis.
I did.
And did he achieve any score at all, or was it big fat zeros everywhere?
Well, he’s usually a really good player. I suspect the real reason he played so poorly on that day was he was a little bit hungover from Friday night. There’s a long history of some kind of egg being used to mean no score or poor performance in sports. And actually, the earliest use that I know of goes back to cricket in the 1860s, and they called it a duck’s egg. And because you might put these big, nice oval O’s up on the scoreboard that kind of were the shape and size of a duck’s egg. Over time, in the United States, it turned into a goose egg, but still meaning the same thing as zero. And somewhere along the way, there was a new tangent where we just talked about laying an egg, you know, extending the metaphor a little bit. We talked about laying an egg. And the understanding was the egg wasn’t just an egg, but it was a rotten egg. And so it transformed into not just no performance, but bad performance.
I like that better.
So your bad performance was not only did you lay an egg, which is unnatural for a human, but you laid a rotten egg. And we all know those stink and they emit sulfur smells and so forth.
That’s exactly what I was trying to convey to him.
Gotcha. Very, very good.
All right. Well, I’m glad to hear that. But it’s really common. Even now you will hear sports announcers in pretty much every sport that I’ve ever watched talking about posted an egg or scored an egg or had an egg in the result or something like that.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I will relay that to One Shack or Shaquan.
Okay.
We’ll give our best to One Shack, will you?
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Take care.
Joe, thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
I guess we should head off at the pass, the bogus etymology about the word love in tennis.
Right.
Yes, it’s not from the French leuf, meaning egg, right?
Correct.
Yeah, as far as we know. We’re not really sure where it comes from, but it doesn’t seem likely.
Right.
No language authority that I know and respect gives credence to the French origin for love, meaning zero, and tennis.
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