A curate's egg

[BringBackCoffeeCreams]

Have you heard this expression before?

The English teacher at my school asked me to explain this to his class as when he googled it it said it was a British expression. So as I'm the only brit it fell to me to explain.

Have I lived under a rock for the last 50 years as I didn't have the foggiest. I asked DH when I got home and he knew it. But he's weird so that's not a fair test of how well known it is.

Do you know what it means? I wouldn't want this class of foreigners thinking we're all going round spouting stuff like this if you're all as clueless as I was.

Yes, I know the expression and know it’s origins. I seem to hear it used fairly often on tv, in news reports and so on.

I’m in my early 60s.

Never jam today.

I’ve never heard it, I’m in the NW in case of regional popularity or not as the case may be.😂

Yes, I know the phrase and the cartoon it came from. The curate was trying to be tactful in a rather prosaic way.

I know what it means but I'd also say it's a pretty antiquated phrase. I remember as a kid in the late 80s asking my dad what it meant.

'jam tomorrow' is a new one on me though.

Nope, I’ve never heard this and wouldn’t have a clue what it meant.

I’m mid-30s and north-west.

I’m in my mid-30s and never heard it before.

^^This — it doesn’t really mean “good in parts”: it means something’s actually bad, but that you’re trying to be diplomatic by pretending it isn’t, and instead finding (implausible) nice things to say about it that are not actually true.

I am a curate’s egg …

I was going to make a vulgar remark about being eaten by a curate. But I stopped myself.

40+ and never heard the phrase!

Yep, but I'm 50+ and spent many a happy hour closeted in the basement of my college library chortling my way through years of old "Punch", so may not be the most normal statistic ;-)

Yes, I've heard of it. I thought it was generally well known.

I'm also from the NW. Maybe we come from a cultural black hole.

Yes. It was fairly common back in the day. I'm not surprised people don't know it today.

@StrychnineInTheSandwiches 😂😂

It's from Alice in Wonderland (or maybe from Alice Through the Looking Glass). It's always jam tomorrow, never jam today, and of course tomorrow never comes. So Alice is sad that they never get to have jam.

I use it all the time.

Never heard it before and I'm 40.

Nearly 50, never heard of it.

I'm in my 50s and familiar enough with the expression to use it occasionally.

I’ve never heard it in real life - only in broadsheet newspaper opinion pieces and similar.

Yup, familiar with it.
Jam tomorrow is more common though. I hear that quite a lot ( Scotland)

I don't even remember Punch. Was that like Private Eye?
I remember Viz! Even then I was reading my older brother's.

Took me a long time to realise why the fat slags needed their purple blotch cream...