Spitting image means an exact likeness or very close resemblance, usually between people. In poetry, the idiom can be used for family inheritance, memory, ancestry, doubles, portraits, or uncanny repetition. It makes likeness vivid and slightly bodily, as though resemblance has been cast or spat into form. A poet may use it tenderly for a child resembling a parent, or eerily when the past seems to reappear. The phrase is useful for themes of identity, resemblance, lineage, and repetition.

Spitting image means exact likeness, especially between relatives. Its origin is debated, but modern usage emphasises resemblance so strong that one person seems reproduced in another. In poetry, it can explore heredity, family memory, identity, reincarnation, or the uncanny return of the dead in the living. Students should ask whether resemblance comforts, traps, or haunts. It pairs well with mirrors, portraits, children, photographs, and inherited gestures.