The spitting image

When someone is the spitting image of another person (or animal, if you remember all the George W. Bush and monkey comparisons from a few years back), they look remarkably or exactly like them. Speaking of famous people, there was even a British television show of the same name which used puppets to caricature them.

This is one of those strange coincidences: on Tuesday afternoon a student asked me the meaning of this expression. Then that very same evening, I saw someone who's the spitting image of a good friend of mine's mother, and I texted her (my friend) to say just that!