the cream of the crop

the cream of the crop

The best of a particular group. We need to draft this player—he's definitely the cream of the crop. These delicious strawberries are the cream of the crop.

See also: cream, crop, of

Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

cream of the crop

Fig. the best of all. This particular car is the cream of the crop. These three students are very bright. They are the cream of the crop in their class.

See also: cream, crop, of

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

cream of the crop, the

The best or choicest of anything, as in The apples from this orchard are definitely the cream of the crop. The noun cream has been used to mean "the best" since the 16th century. The French equivalent of the present term, la crème de la crème ("the cream of the cream") was familiar in English by 1800.

See also: cream, of

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

the cream of the crop

If you talk about the cream of the crop, you mean the best people or things in a particular set or group. The first Midlands media degree show features the cream of the crop of this year's graduates in photography, film, and video. They are among the cream of the crop of emerging architects in Scotland.

See also: cream, crop, of

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

the cream of the crop

the very best of a particular type; the crème de la crème .

See also: cream, crop, of

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

the ˌcream of the ˈcrop

the best people or things in a particular group: Only the cream of the crop of the year’s movies are nominated for an award.

The cream of something is the best of a group or people or things.

See also: cream, crop, of

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

cream of the crop, the

The very best of all. Cream is, of course, the richest part of milk and rises to the top. It was transferred to mean the best of any collective entity by the seventeenth century. John Ray, for example, included “That’s the cream of the jest” in his collection of English proverbs (1678). The exact locution involving the best of the crop was no doubt adopted for its alliterative appeal. The French version, la crème de la crème, literally “the cream of the cream,” meaning the best of the best, was well known in English by 1800 or so and also is considered a cliché. It gained new impetus in Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, first made into a play, then a motion picture (1969), in which the schoolteacher-heroine assures her students that they will, under her tutelage, become the crème de la crème.

See also: cream, of

The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer