Meaning
The embarrassment of being left looking foolish after a public error, a failed prediction, or a boast that backfires. It almost always appears in the patterns 'have egg on your face' or 'end up with egg on your face', and it ranges from mild embarrassment to public humiliation. Informal; it nearly always follows 'have', 'end up with', or 'be left with'. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The expression feels old but is not: the evidence points to mid-20th-century America. Michael Quinion's earliest citation is from The Bee of Danville, Virginia (27 August 1941), where 'There I was - with egg on my face!' appears as teenage slang; the same year the teen actress Jane Withers cited it as current slang for embarrassment. Mental Floss documents a playful literal run-up in early-1900s newspapers: a 1908 Wisconsin item joked that a man with egg on his face 'must be a millionaire' when winter eggs were dear, and a 1911 Kansas story told of a young man scolded for extravagance after appearing with egg on his face. How the literal image became the idiom is disputed: John Ciardi suggested incompetent actors pelted with eggs, others point to sloppy table manners, and a World Wide Words reader proposed egg-sucking farm dogs caught with yolk on their muzzles. Quinion's verdict is that the origin is obscure; none of the theories is verified.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- end up with egg on your face
- got egg on his face
- have egg on one's face
- wipe the egg off your face
- with egg all over your face
Usage Examples
- The pundit who guaranteed a landslide was left with egg on his face by morning.
- After mocking the project for years, the board ended up with egg all over its face when it won the design prize.
- Keep a copy of that email, or you will have egg on your face when the client disputes the price.