best bib and tucker, one's

one's best bib and tucker

Rur. one's best clothing. I always put on my best bib and tucker on Sundays. Put on your best bib and tucker, and let's go to the city.See also: and, bib, tucker

Sunday best

one's best clothing, which one would wear to church. (See also Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.) We are in our Sunday best, ready to go. I got mud on my Sunday best.See also: Sunday

best bib and tucker

One's finest clothes, dressed up, as in The men were told to put on their best bib and tucker for the dinner dance. Although wearing either a bib (frill at front of a man's shirt) or a tucker (ornamental lace covering a woman's neck and shoulders) is obsolete, the phrase survives. [Mid-1700s] For a synonym, see Sunday best. See also: and, bib, tucker

Sunday best

One's finest clothes, as in They were all in their Sunday best for the photographer. This expression alludes to reserving one's best clothes for going to church; indeed, an older idiom is Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes ( meeting here meaning "prayer meeting"). [Mid-1800s] See also: Sunday

Sunday best

n. one’s best clothing, which one would wear to church. We are in our Sunday best, ready to go. See also: Sunday

best bib and tucker, one's

Dressed in one’s finest clothes. A tucker was an ornamental piece of lace worn by women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to cover the neck and shoulders. A bib was either a fancy frill worn at the front of a man’s shirt or an actual formal shirt front. Their pairing with best dates from the mid-eighteenth century. The word bib appeared in print in America in 1795: “The old gentleman put on his best bib and band [i.e., collar]” (The Art of Courting, Newburyport, Massachusetts). A later locution, dating from the mid-nineteenth century, is one’s Sunday best, also known as Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. It refers to an era when one’s finery was reserved for church (or “prayer meeting”). These Americanisms sound archaic today. See also gussied up.See also: and, bib