spit-image

Nudgeを読み終えたので今度はまた小説を読むことにしました。Penguin BooksのModern Classic
シリーズのBreakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capoteを図書館から借りたところ、Breakfast at Tiffany's だけではなく、他にも短編が含まれていて、Breakfast at Tiffany'sはその内の最初の話です。映画にBreakfast at Tiffany'sがあったのを知っていますが、観たことはないので、読み始めた小説の話と関係があるのかどうかも分かりません。
さてその本から最初に取り上げる単語は "spit-image" です。
話の語り手（名前はまだ分かりません）が馴染みのバーに行くと、日本人カメラマンが撮った写真を見せられます。
In the envelope were three photographs more or less the same, though taken from different angles: a tall delicate Negro man wearing a calicaco skirt and with a shy, yet vain smile, displaying in his hands and odd wood sculpture, an elongated carving of a head, a girl's, her hair sleek and short as a young man's, her smooth wood eyes too large and tilted in the tapering face, her mouth wide, over drawn, not unlike clown-lips. On a glance it resembled most primitive carving; and then it didn't, for here was the spit-image of Holly Golightly, at least as much of a likeness as a dark still thing could be.
Holly Golightlyは語り手と写真を見せているバーテンダーの共通の友達です。文脈からすると " spit-image" は写真に写っている木像とHolly Golightlyが似ている事を意味していると推測できますが、どうでしょう。
"spit-image" の形では辞書の項目にありませんでしたが、"spit and image" あるいは "spitting image" での説明を見つけました。
・Dictionary.com: spit and image, Informal . exact likeness; counterpart: Hunched over his desk, pen in hand, he was the spit and image of his father at work. Also, spitting image, spit 'n' image.
・Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary: someone who looks very much like someone else - usually singular: She is the spitting image of her mother.
・The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms: A precise resemblance, especially in closely related persons. For example, Dirk is the spitting image of his grandfather . This idiom alludes to the earlier use of the noun spit for "likeness," in turn probably derived from an old proverb, "as like as one as if he had been spit out of his mouth" (c. 1400). The current idiom dates from about 1900.
似ているどころかそっくりと言うことですね。