Origin
The term derives from a cartoon published in the humorous British magazine Punch on 9 November 1895. Drawn by George du Maurier and entitled "True Humility", it pictures a timid-looking curate taking breakfast in his bishop's house. The bishop remarks with candid honesty to his lowly guest: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones." The curate replies, desperate not to offend his eminent host and ultimate employer: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!"
The term relies on an objective analysis and intuitive understanding of the depicted scenario: a self-contained egg cannot be both partially spoiled and partially unspoiled. To pretend to find elements of freshness in a bad egg is thus a desperate attempt to find good in something which is irredeemably bad. The humour is derived from the fact that, given the social situation, the timid curate is so obsessively fearful of giving offence that he cannot even agree with his superior's acknowledgement that he has served a bad egg, and thereby ends up looking absurd himself by exposing his obsequiousness.
Read more about this topic: Curate's Egg
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)