Jam tomorrow or jam to-morrow is an expression for a never-fulfilled promise. It originates from Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In the book The White Queen offers Alice "jam every other day" as an inducement to work for her: The Queen's rule is a pun on a mnemonic for remembering the distinction between the Latin words "" and "" (sometimes written "jam").

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  • Jam tomorrow or jam to-morrow is an expression for a never-fulfilled promise. It originates from Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In the book The White Queen offers Alice "jam every other day" as an inducement to work for her: The Queen's rule is a pun on a mnemonic for remembering the distinction between the Latin words "" and "" (sometimes written "jam"). Both mean "now", but "nunc" is only used in the present tense, while "iam" is used in the past and future tenses. (It is not clear if Carroll invented this mnemonic or was merely quoting it. ) In more recent times, the phrase has been used to describe a variety of unfulfilled political promises on issues such as tax, and was used by C. S. Lewis in satirising the extrapolation of evolution from biological theory to philosophical guiding principle, in his hymn to evolution, based on Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us and set to the same tune, Mannheim:
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  • Jam tomorrow or jam to-morrow is an expression for a never-fulfilled promise. It originates from Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In the book The White Queen offers Alice "jam every other day" as an inducement to work for her: The Queen's rule is a pun on a mnemonic for remembering the distinction between the Latin words "" and "" (sometimes written "jam").
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  • Jam tomorrow
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