jam tomorrow

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jam tomorrow

Where it comes from

From Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where Alice is offered “jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day”. This is a pun on a mnemonic for the usage of jam, iam in Latin (note i/j conflation in Latin spelling), which means “now”, but only in the future or past tense, not in the present (which is instead nunc).

noun

idiomatic, uncountable Promised benefits that never arrive. The “purposive” man ... does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrow and never jam to-day.
broadly, idiomatic, uncountable The availability of a resource at a future date. The consumption-possibilities curve illustrates the choice which must be made: more jam today means less jam tomorrow; less jam today means more jam tomorrow.

Similar: pie in the sky

Thesaurus

noun

Similar: pie in the sky

Translations

Every language

noun promised benefits that never arrive

Ελληνικά	λαγοί με πετραχήλια lagoí me petrachília
Русский	жура́вль в не́бе žurávlʹ v nébe

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MLA

"jam tomorrow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/jam%20tomorrow. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

jam tomorrow. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/jam%20tomorrow

Chicago

"jam tomorrow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/jam%20tomorrow.

BibTeX

@misc{jam_tomorrow_2026,
  title = {jam tomorrow},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/jam%20tomorrow},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}