Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Something with both good and bad qualities.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun idiomatic A thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoilt by the bad.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[From a cartoon published in the British humor magazine Punch in 1895 about a curate who, having been served a bad egg by his bishop, said that parts of it were excellent.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From an 1895 cartoon in Punch, in which a timid curate assures his host, the bishop, that "parts" of his bad egg are excellent.
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Examples
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jeffazi commented on the word curate's egg
Something having both good and bad parts.
[From a cartoon in Punch magazine (London, UK) in which a timid curate (a junior clergy member), when served a stale egg at a bishop's table, tries to assure his host that parts of the egg were edible:
"One act of sportsmanship by London Irish and a moment's opportunism by Saracens separated these two sides after a curate's egg of a match."
David Llewellyn; Saracens 24 London Irish 20; The Independent (London, UK);Nov 25, 2007.
December 12, 2007