do (one's) level best

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do (one's) level best

To do as well as one can at something. I'm just not good at math, so, believe me, a B- in Algebra means that I've done my level best. No, you're not the star player on the team, but you always do your level best, which encourages the rest of us to do the same.

do your level best

COMMON If you do your level best to do something, you try as hard as you can to do it. The President told American troops that he would do his level best to bring them home soon. They're doing their level best to answer all the questions that people have.

do your level best

do your utmost; make all possible efforts.

do/try your level ˈbest (to do something)

try as hard as you can: I’ll do my level best to be there by ten o’clock, but I can’t promise anything.

level best, to do one's

To exert oneself to the fullest. A nineteenth-century Americanism, this term has been traced to the days of the California gold rush, when miners panning for gold would shake sand and gravel until it was level and revealed the ore. It appeared in An Arkansaw Doctor in 1851: “We put our horses out at their level best.” Mark Twain also used it, in a poem, “He Done His Level Best” (1875): “If he’d a reg’lar task to do, he never took no rest; or if ’twas off-and-on, the same, he done his level best.”