curate's egg
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of curate's egg
After a cartoon by G. du Maurier in the English humor weekly Punch (Nov. 9, 1895): a meek curate, when served a bad egg at the bishop's table, replies that “parts of it are excellent”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Couple this with the almost 20-year age difference between him and Zooey Deschanel’s love interest and you end up with a strange curate’s egg of a film.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 23, 2020
It is much better than that, but remains something of a curate's egg.
From Nature ● Dec. 13, 2016
And the other three, like the curate’s egg, were good in parts.
From Slate ● Sep. 27, 2012
In the end it was an oversized curate's egg.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 6, 2011
Parts of it, like the curate’s egg, are quite excellent, but unless you have an acquaintance with the various regions of the Coast to which your various informants refer, you cannot know which is which.
From West African studies by Mary Henrietta Kingsley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
