curate's egg

noun
/ˈkjʊəɹətz ˌɛɡ/UK/ˈkjʊɹɪtz ˌɛɡ/US

Etymology

From 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!”.

Definitions

  1. A thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoiled by the bad.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for curate's egg. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA