better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick vs better than nothing

better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

phrase

  • Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement. 

better than nothing

adj

  • Barely useful; almost worthless or pointless, but nevertheless better than having nothing at all. 

How often have the words better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and better than nothing occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )