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.