A: I’ve never met a man as obedient to his wife as Xiao Li. He turns in his paycheck every month and does all the housework.

    B: Xiao Li is the spitting image of his father, who behaved just like a lamb in front of his wife.

    Note: This idiom means “the exact likeness.” The possible allusion is that someone is so similar to another as if he has been spat out of the other person’s mouth. That idea, if not the exact phrase, was used by the end of the 17th century, when George Farquhar used it in his 1689 comic play “Love and a Bottle.” The line was: Poor child! he’s as like his own dadda as if he were spit out of his mouth. Other languages like French have their own versions of this phrase. Chinese people would say someone is “cast out of the same mold” as his dad or mom.