make best

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/29/2010 01:47 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>>>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.

Since I've been treated seriously ... the excluded middle is "it" --
"make it better".

Joel

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