Question

Lay an Egg to give an embarrassing performance

Accepted Answer

Who told Sam she could sing? She really laid an egg at the talent show. This idiom comes from Britain, where cricket has been a popular game for centuries. If a team failed to score a single point, people said it had laid a duck's egg, an object that has the same shape as the 0 on the score-board. In the United States, toward the end of the 1800s, the saying "laid an egg" was applied to performers in vaudeville shows who bombed in front of the audience. In baseball slang, the expression for "zero" is "goose egg," and to get no score is to "lay a goose egg." Today you can "lay an egg" if you do anything that fails totally because nobody likes it.

Idiom	Lay an Egg
Example	Who told Sam she could sing? She really laid an egg at the talent show.
Meaning	to give an embarrassing performance
Origin	This idiom comes from Britain, where cricket has been a popular game for centuries. If a team failed to score a single point, people said it had laid a duck's egg, an object that has the same shape as the 0 on the score-board. In the United States, toward the end of the 1800s, the saying "laid an egg" was applied to performers in vaudeville shows who bombed in front of the audience. In baseball slang, the expression for "zero" is "goose egg," and to get no score is to "lay a goose egg." Today you can "lay an egg" if you do anything that fails totally because nobody likes it.

Egg Laid Score Lay Told Sam Sing Talent