curate's egg
A thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoiled by the badA thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoiled by the bad.
Translations
1 languagesMeaning
1 senses(idiomatic)A thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoiled by the bad.
Origin
From a cartoon by the Franco-British cartoonist and author George Du Maurier (1834–1896) cFrom a cartoon by the Franco-British cartoonist and author George Du Maurier (1834–1896) captioned “True Humility” in the 9 November 1895 issue of Punch magazine, in which a bishop says to his mealtime guest, a curate, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!” The timid curate replies, “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!”.
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Forms
plural: curates' eggs| Singular | curate's egg |
|---|---|
| Plural | curates' eggs |
irregular
Word family
5 related wordsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.