something of varying quality, part good and part bad
The edition of the English humorous magazine Punch dated 9 November 1895 carried a cartoon by George du Maurier, appropriately titled 'True Humility', showing timid curate eating a bad egg at the home of his bishop and bravely assuring his host that parts of it are excellent. The cartoon so appealed to the public that phrases such as good in parts and part of it are excellent were soon in common use and curate's egg came to denote something that is poor but has its good points. Logically, of course, a bad egg is a bad through and through and so a curate's egg ought to be a diplomatic way of saying that something is dreadful. But logic is not always the way with idiomatic phrases (see NONSENSICAL IDIOMS, page 124).
The latest in Weidenfeld's series of short biographies is a bit of a curate's egg. At its best it is a thoughtful and incisive essay, but at its worst it is a prosecution brief, with all the distortion and special pleading that implies.
THE INDEPENDENT, 5 AUGUST 2002
from a Dictionary of Idioms and Their Origins by Linda & Roger Flavell
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