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Put your best foot forwardMeaningEmbark on a journey or task with purpose and gusto. OriginThis phrase is first recorded in the second edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's poem A Wife, circa 1613:
The Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings dates "Always put your best foot forward" to 1495, but provides no supporting evidence for that. 'Put your best foot forward' is rather an odd saying for us to use as it implies three or more feet. When I was at university studying maths, a lecturer worked out the answer to a student's question as 'two quarters'. He then corrected himself and said "we have a special name for that". Likewise, 'the best' is the name we give for something that surpasses all others. Something that surpasses one other is specifically called 'the better', as in one's wife being called 'one's better half'.
Shakespeare, not usually a stickler for linguistic exactitude, used a 'proper' form of the expression in King John, 1595 :
See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare. See also: the List of Proverbs. Phrasefinder is also on
Tudor Phrases and Sayings - a book on the meanings and origins of the phrases and sayings that Shakespeare and Henry VIII used that we use still use every day. |
Cows (and Rolf Harris) may be able to put their best foot forward but 'better foot forward' makes more sense for humans. 
