make best

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM
Fri Jan 29 18:47:31 UTC 2010


>>Only thing I can think of is that it's a mishearing/misreporting of "try
>>and
>>make [the] best [of it]" -- as it stands, it doesn't sound like anything
>>even The Smile would utter.
>>
>>Certainly not an idiom I've ever come on.
>>
>>Robin
>
> A comparative/superlative sequence for "make do / better / best"?  :-)
>
> Joel

A sequence with an excluded middle, perhaps.  "The prime minister didn't
make good, but we just had to make the best of it."  Whereas "make better"
... nah.

Maybe The Smile *did say, "We must try and make best," collapsing an idiom.
Though he is more notable for, if not inventing, then popularising the
Verbless Sentence.

Robin

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