THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XXXIII

Tad Tuleja 

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

LAY AN EGG

The idea of failing by laying and egg dates from the fifteenth century, when the English upper classes were adopting  the French sport of tennis. Scorekeeping in those days was done on a large slate at mid-court, and the French love of balance specified that the slate indicate a score for both players, even if one had not yet earned a point. Thus the scorekeeper gave the scoreless player a zero, and since the figure resembled an egg, to mettre l'oeuf, or "lay an egg," came to stand for the accomplishment of nothing. The correlation of zero and egg survives today, especially in scoring tennis matches. For example, the call "Thirty-Love" is the Anglicized version of the original "Trente- L'oeuf."