To not like the expression 'good egg' being used to refer to a persons character

[giraffeupatree]

It is being used in the Co-op's Easter advert on the radio. It makes me wince each time I hear it.

Am I being far to politically correct?

I'm assuming that the marketing department of the Co-op have not researched the origins of the expression?

Bertrand - I just posted TWICE that I have heard it used by cockney family!!

Sorry, not having a go at you, it's just sometimes I feel like my posts are totally invisible on these threads!

Sorry- I thought you were talking about "egg and spoon" which I have heard too- not "good egg"

Quentin?

Well I'm not an etymologist, but generally, you'd need to find written examples of a phrase (or other types of recording if you're looking more recently). Like all historical research, you're limited by the sources available. Oral cultures can be impossible to trace because language changes over time do even the surviving forms may be very different to those used in the past.

The point is really that 'a quick google' isn't very rigorous as a research method. Your method of checking the OED (which uses proper etymological research) is better than just going with whatever comes up on google. MN is very well optimised so this thread is likely to come up to future good egg googlers, who may then conclude that the phrase must be a bit dubious in much the same way the OP has.

Make mine a bottle. And a half

And you are right

• I have definitely heard 'egg and spoon' used as racist rhyming slang for 'coon'. 'Coon' as a racist term seems to have been used almost entirely in an American context until the very late C19 when it came over to Britain - according to the OED (which I am sure is not supposed to be used as a sole source in this way. I am not an etymologist so this is all very amateur sleuthing!)
• I found a citation to 'good egg' in Britain in the 1860s, which suggests this phrase predates the coming of the word 'coon' to our shores, suggesting a separate and perhaps more innocent origin.
• HOWEVER, and this is the critical bit, more recently it sounds as though there has been a kind of convergence in some minds of these two separate phrases, so that 'good egg' has now been tarnished with some of the racism of 'egg and spoon' (all those very similar post-Stephen Lawrence citations on Google books).

I'm not sure a recent spurious connection based on paranoia is a great reason for retiring a perfectly good phrase.

In two sentences: you can't have 'egg and spoon' as rhyming slang for a word that isn't in use in the culture yet, so if 'good egg' exists in Britain in the 1860s, but 'coon' doesn't make it over until the late 1890s, 'good egg' may not have been originarily a racist phrase. However, it may now be becoming more so as the two phrases seem to have bled together in more recent years.

stepaway - But language is full of recent, spurious connections based on paranoia. It's not a threat to some precious and sanctified origin - it's how it works. Just look at Shakespeare's neologisms - so many of them are a direct response to the immediate political and economic context of his time, be it the range of terms he uses for indebtedness or his vocabulary of Machiavellian politics.

It's not becoming more a racist phrase. The political climate in the last 20 years has led people to go looking for racism in totally innocuous phrases. That this has caused people to make a (completely spurious) link between two distinct phrases that simply share a very common word does not mean that the phrase has become racist.

No one uses 'good egg' in a racist way. All that happened is that a small number of people have decided that using the phrase in a completely non-racist way might be problematic because it contains the same common word as a much less well known and not particularly widely used phrase that is used in a racist way and has racist origins.

The sensible thing to do in such a situation is not to say, 'oh, better not use it because it's become a bit racist now' but to point out that it is not and never has been racist and to clear up the confusion.

Bad eggs are a good metaphor because you can't tell by looking that they're rotten. Good eggs as the opposite of this are totally unproblematic. Indeed, the metaphor is all about not judging by appearances (whereas racism is all about discriminating against people because of what they look like).

However, it may now be becoming more so as the two phrases seem to have bled together in more recent years

Only by people forcing them together because they happen to contain one word the same!
Apples and pears is rhyming slang for stairs, but that doesn't mean "The Big Apple" or "apple of my eye" has anything to do with stairs.

Shove: this kind of over-zealous cleansing of language based on absolutely spurious connections is not good for society at all. It isn't just normal evolution of language and it is completely counterproductive. It simply provides justification for the argument that caring about language is just liberal hand wringing 'politically correct' nonsense.

There are clearly words and phrases that have racist connotations and should be avoided. Trying to attach racist connotations to innocuous phrases does not in any way help to fight racism.

Shove the Holly yes, I am an elderly professor (62 in April, Russell Group in North of England) currently supposed to be doing the edits on a paper on financing the Great War.
StepAway hear hear. I used to be married to an etymologist, and he could entertain me for hours with spurious Latin derivations of words.

Oldprof - I wasn't questioning your credentials, just curious! I'm nosy and thought it was a great name! I am imagining you in a chesterfield chair with a large glass of very classy port.

Stepaway - I just see it as what language does. People are always forcing bits and pieces of it together, or pulling them apart. It's always changing, morphing, always in flight. Some of the most amazing, poetic uses of language have come when people have ripped words out of their old moorings and put them together in a new way.

That said, I think it's completely legitimate to have a view on the politics of new uses of language. We can all resist certain uses, or help others along... someone is going to tell me to stop making 'fetch' happen in a minute . This just happens to be a development that doesn't bother me, but I guess that's also because of my own class politics - 'good egg' has always seemed a bit redolent of jolly hockey sticks to me and therefore not a phrase I'd ever be able to use (I suspect anyone who knows me would burst out laughing).

PS I wouldn't call 62 elderly, Oldprof!!

haven't RTFT so apologies if someones already linked to this etymology site which talks about the oigin of ' bad egg'. I think it is only reasonable to infer 'good egg' is the opposite.

Someone called me a "good egg" the other day! I did them a favour and I thought it was lovely and hugged them.

Your are being beyond ridiculous, I expect most words have hidden meanings if you search hard enough.

I want to be called a "good egg" again.

So hang on is my username unwittingly offensive?
Fucking hell ....

You're a Good Egg Omelette... I mean Roussette.

My granny used to use "bad egg in a basket" which meant one bad person in a otherwise very nice family/class/group. Good egg just came as the opposite to that.

Oh dear, I always really liked these expressions - good and bad egg. They sound cute. But yep, I will avoid henceforward.

Well I shall be balancing out all you lily livered word avoiders. I promise that, henceforth, I shall refer to people as good/bad eggs as often as possible; multiple times per day forever

So nah!

OurBlanche that's so not fetch.

I won't be changing my username. ..Im quite simply flabbergasted ....
I'm also asian and very pc but honestly saying someone is a good/bad egg isn't offensive in the least

I'll fetch you one in a minute, shovetheholly

Oddly that's courtesy of my Nana, c. 1970...

Chillyegg is that as in Indian/Pakistani? I can now hear Sanjeev Baskar saying "Oh, he's a jolly good egg" complete with sideways head waggle, now

[Hastily explains that is a mental image inspired by Goodness Gracious Me rather than a racist slur]