Word Stories(6)

EGG The expression, to lay an egg, means to fail badly, completely. The phrase comes from the ancient English game of cricket. A player who failed to score was said to make a duck’s egg, because zero was shaped like a duck’s egg. In the words of one British journal, "Out of the eleven Surrey batsmen who played against Nots yesterday, no less than five were credited with duck’s eggs". The phrase crossed the ocean and joined the American game of baseball, where zero was called a goose egg. From this failure to make a score was born another expression for almost any kind