X-Nico

Mess of pottage

Terry Pratchett has his character Sergeant Colon say this in Feet of Clay, after Nobby of the Watch has guessed that the phrase is “a spot of massage.” Theodore Sturgeon had one of his characters say this about H. G. Wells in his 1948 short story Unite and Conquer; but Roger Lancelyn Green (in 1962) ascribed it to Professor Nevill Coghill, Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford.

see also