EGG CITING RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Submitted by ub on

Talk about getting egg on your face.... Lincolnshire hosts their annual Egg Russian Roulette World Championships. Independent Television News Correspondent, Sam Datta-Paulin says Russian roulette just got a little more egg-citing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVf3ISrDW2Q&feature=inp-tw-paq

Egg on face often implies that you have made a serious mistake, but more strictly it indicates that something you have done has left you looking embarrassed or foolish:

It feels like one of those expressions that have been around for ever, but the evidence suggest that it dates only from the middle of last century. It’s definitely American in origin, though now widely known wherever English is spoken.

I know of two suggestions for where it came from. The late John Ciardi suggested an origin in the lower-class and more rowdy kind of theatrical performance, in which an incompetent actor would have been pelted with eggs and forced off the stage. The other is that it was a comment on a minor social gaffe at a meal, when poor manners or sloppy eating left egg around your mouth.