- (in the Anglican Church) an assistant to a vicar (= a priest, who is in charge of the church or churches in a particular area)Topics Religion and festivalsc2, Jobsc2
Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
Idioms
See curate in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarythe/a curate’s egg
- (British English) something that has some good parts and some bad ones
- Their investment plan shows the familiar curate's egg pattern of some bits doing well and others doing badly.
CultureThe phrase comes from a cartoon in the British magazine Punch in 1895, in which a nervous young curate is having breakfast with a bishop. The bishop says 'I'm afraid you've got a bad egg there' and the curate, not wanting to upset the bishop, replies, 'Oh no, my Lord! … Parts of it are excellent!’
Check pronunciation:
curate1