Meaning
One's finest clothes, traditionally the outfit kept for church on Sunday and brought out only for special occasions. It appears mostly in the frames in one's Sunday best and dressed in one's Sunday best, and it is used for anyone's best outfit, whether worn to a wedding, a funeral, a photograph or a formal lunch, often with a playful or nostalgic nod to the churchgoing habit behind it. Usually preceded by a possessive - her Sunday best - and treated as singular. In the United States the rival Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes was common in the nineteenth century and now sounds archaic or dialectal. The dating split between the OED's 1794 and American Heritage's mid-1800s is reported. Regional use: British and American English; earliest evidence British, with a strong later American association.
Origin
The OED's earliest evidence for the noun Sunday best is 1794, in the Parliamentary Register of 1781-96 - verified directly - with the entry dated to the late 1700s. The habit it names is older, and sibling phrases document it: the OED's nearby entries record Sunday clothes from 1642, and Etymonline likewise gives Sunday clothes from the 1640s. A 1747 translation already jokes that a countrywoman minds nothing on Sundays so much as her best Bib and Tucker (Word Histories). Dictionary dating disagrees: the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms brackets Sunday best as mid-1800s, later than the OED's 1794 citation, and calls the American form Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes an older idiom - the disagreement reported. The OED's frequency data show usage climbing steadily across the nineteenth century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- best bib and tucker
- Sunday clothes
- Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes
Usage Examples
- The whole family turned out in their Sunday best for the church centenary photograph.
- He kept one grey suit at the back of the wardrobe, strictly reserved as his Sunday best.
- Dust off your Sunday best; the wedding is at three and the bride's family dresses to impress.