There are many ways to break an egg - and just about as many ways to use them in sayings

Q. Which came first, the chicken or the egg

A. ...is just one of the eggy metaphors we use in everyday speech. Now it's often trotted out as something along the lines of 'it's a chicken-and-egg situation', in other words it's unclear who did what first that led to a particular outcome.

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Q. So, what else

A. Here are a few of the better-known ones:

Egghead - an intellectual or intelligent person, from the idea that such people are often bald or that they have a high forehead (as in 'highbrow') in which to house an extra-large brain.

Bad egg - a disreputable character or a bad speculation.

Good egg - opposite of the above.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket - don't venture all you have in one speculation, either your money or your hopes.

Golden egg - great profit, from the folkloric goose that laid a golden egg every day - it turns up in Jack and the Beanstalk - but which came to a sticky end when its greedy owner killed it in order to get all the gold at once.

Like as two eggs - exactly alike; dead ringers.

As sure as eggs is eggs - a dead cert. This is possibly a corruption of a mathematical formula 'x is x', though eggs is eggs seems to make sense as it is.

To walk on eggs - a variation on the more better-known 'to walk on eggshells', meaning, metaphorically, to tread carefully or be very tactful.

To egg-trot - in equestrian circles this is a cautious trotting pace, as if you were riding to market with eggs in your panniers.

Curate's egg - good in parts. The origins of this phrase are in a cartoon in Punch magazine in 1895, where a young curate assures his bishop that the bad egg he is eating for breakfast is 'excellent' in parts.

Nest egg - money stashed away for the future. It derives from the practice of putting a china egg in a nest to induce a hen to lay more; so some money put aside might inspire one to save more.

Scrambled eggs - gold braid on a uniform.

To teach your grandmother to suck eggs - to tell someone already adept at something, particularly someone older, how to undertake that particular task.

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Q. And some less well known

A.

Egg Feast or Egg Saturday - the Saturday preceding Shrove Tuesday, so called because eggs were forbidden food during Lent, and it was therefore deemed wise to get a few down you the weekend before the period of fasting started.

Wind egg - an egg with a thin shell or no shell at all, which was traditionally supposed to have been the result of a hen being fertilised by the wind.

From the egg to the apples - from first to last. This derives from the Roman habit of beginning a meal with eggs and ending with fruit.

To have eggs on the spit - to be very busy. The reference is to roasting eggs on a spit over a fire, which required constant attention.

To get eggs for your money - to be ripped off.

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Q. And did you know

A. ...that a duck in cricket comes from duck egg, because the 0 on the scoreboard looks like an egg The Americans use 'goose egg' for the same reason.

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Q. And when is an egg not an egg

A. When you're being egged on. This comes from the Anglo-Saxon ecg, meaning a sharp point, and goes back to the Saxon verb eggian, to incite. Hence, incidentally, edge-hog (hedgehog), a hog with sharp points.

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See also the article on the�curate's egg

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith