Curate's egg

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Bishop: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones"; Curate: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!"
"True Humility" by George du Maurier, originally published in Punch, 1895.

The expression "a curate's egg" originally meant something that is partly good and partly bad, but as a result is entirely spoiled. Modern usage has tended to change this to mean something having a mix of good and bad qualities.

The phrase derives from a cartoon in the humorous British magazine Punch on 9 November 1895. Drawn by George du Maurier and entitled "True Humility", it pictured a timid-looking curate taking breakfast in his bishop's house.^[1]

The bishop says, "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones." The curate replies, "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!"

The original sense of the expression referred to an objective understanding of the depicted scenario: since an egg that is even partly "bad" is effectively inedible, the supposedly "excellent" parts do not redeem it. The more modern sense of the expression reflects the point of view the curate is trying to argue: that the "excellent" parts compensate enough for the "bad" parts to render complaints – or at least declaring something a total loss – inappropriate. The humour, then and now, is derived from the fact that, given the social situation, the timid curate feels that he dare not complain about the quality of an inedible egg that would ordinarily be immediately rejected.

In the final issue of Punch (1992), the cartoon was re-printed with the caption: Curate: This f***ing egg's off!

[edit] Examples

Published examples of use cited by the Oxford English Dictionary:

• "The past spring and summer season has seen much fluctuation. Like the curate's egg, it has been excellent in parts."

—Minister's Gazette of Fashion (1905)

• "All the same it is a curate's egg of a book. While the whole may be somewhat stale and addled, it would be unfair not to acknowledge the merits of some of its parts."

—Oxford Magazine (1962)

From "The Scientists", by John Gribben (2001)

• "Like the curate's egg, the details of Wegener's hypothesis were good in parts."

[edit] References