egg on one’s face, to have/wipe off the

To have made a fool of oneself. An Americanism of the mid-twentieth century, this self-evident metaphor for having made a mess of oneself soon crossed the Atlantic. (John Ciardi, how- ever, speculates it may derive from an entertainer’s being pelted with garbage, including raw eggs, by a dissatisfied audience.) The other version, to wipe the egg off one’s face, means the same thing, implying that one has made an embarrassing error (not that one is correcting it). See also LAY AN EGG.