Columnists sometimes lay an egg, but Martin has laid an ostrich omelette.
Q1. why 'lay an egg' means 'fail'?
Q2. what's the meaning of 'lay an ostrich omelette'?
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I think it's a rather overstretched attempt an a pun - riffing off a pretty "dated" idiomatic usage anyway.– FumbleFingersCommented May 28, 2021 at 13:43
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1 Answer
Where did this idiom come from?
According to The Free Dictionary, which cites The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer, this idiom has separate origins in British and American dialects.
In Britain this term comes from cricket, where a player or team failing to score has, since the mid-nineteenth century, been said to get a duck’s egg (meaning 0, or zero). In America the term appeared in the latter part of the nineteenth century in vaudeville and theater, similarly signifying a flop of a performance. It was transferred to other arenas by the early twentieth century, and fittingly, a headline in Variety (the American chronicle of show business at the time) read, in October 1929, “Wall Street Lays An Egg.”
What's that about ostriches and omelettes?
Ostrich eggs are big. Very big. And you can't have an omelette without breaking the egg. So, whatever Martin did, it was a much bigger and fail-y failure than you would usually expect from a columnist.
