Best foot forward?

Reader question:

Please explain “best foot forward”, as in “you’ve got to put your best foot forward by doing your homework.”

My comments:

This is a perfect example showing how it is with idioms.

An idiom is a well-worn and sometimes overused phrase involving a group of words with a meaning of its own that is different from the meanings of each separate word put together. In other words, you can’t always guess out the meaning of an idiom by taking the individual words involved at face value.

“Under the weather”, for instance, means “ill”.

“Putting one’s best foot forward” is another good case in point.

First of all, putting one’s best foot forward doesn’t make immediate grammatical sense. As phrase.org.uk explains:

‘Put your best foot forward’ is rather an odd saying for us to use as it implies three or more feet. When I was at university studying maths, a lecturer worked out the answer to a student’s question as ‘two quarters’. He then corrected himself and said “we have a special name for that”. Likewise, ‘the best’ is the name we give for something that surpasses all others. Something that surpasses one other is specifically called ‘the better’, as in one’s wife being called ‘one’s better half’.

Cows...may be able to put their best foot forward but ‘better foot forward’ makes more sense for humans.

And yet, that is not the case here. Best foot forward, not better. Likewise when you’re competing with another man for the same girlfriend and he challenges you saying “Let the best man win”, he doesn’t imply that there is a third man lurking somewhere either. No more third-parties, alright? He’s talking about just the two of thee.

In short, when it comes to idioms, one need be flexible. Grammar, you see, is like the legal laws and other rules of society. It can be bent. And unlike the constitution or the criminal laws of a country that can only be bent by the powers that be, grammatical laws can be bent by anyone – so long as they do it often enough. In other words, language is habitual. And habit makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, even bad habits make sense, too.

The best way to remember an idiom therefore is to meet it and meet it often so that one day it becomes familiar to you like an old brother.

Oh, by the way, “putting your best foot forward” means for you to do something with purpose and gusto.

Here are two media examples:

1. China’s Yao Ming(notes) is returning to the Houston Rockets—a giant selling point for general manager Daryl Morey as he begins courting big-name free agents this week.

The 7-foot-6 All-Star center said Tuesday that he has picked up his player option for next season, the last year of his five-year contract. Yao sat out last season following reconstructive foot surgery and said he wanted to see how the injury healed before making his decision.

Yao said he’s resumed basketball activities and should be 100 percent when training camp begins...

With Yao back, the Rockets also offer a unique marketing opportunity for any free agent to consider. Regular-season games draw enormous television ratings in China and several of Yao’s teammates have landed lucrative endorsement deals with Chinese companies...

Morey said he’s not discouraged by reports that the most coveted free agents of this year’s class have already decided where they’re headed. Free agents can’t sign contracts until July 8.

“Until July 8, no one can make up their minds 100 percent, no one can sign their name to the dotted line,” Morey said. “So there’s an opening there. My sense from the chatter is that no one has really made up their minds. But the only people who really know that are the free agents.

“All we can do is put our best foot forward and make the free agent understand why Houston is a great destination, and hopefully, it works out.”

- Yao Ming coming back to Rockets, foot healed, AP, June 29, 2010.

2. Kelli Shimabukuro, branch manager at the East Columbia branch of the county library system, grew up in Ohio, where spelling bees were a “big to-do,” she said. The absence of a countywide spelling bee here seemed a glaring omission.

“Howard County is known for its great schools and putting an emphasis on education. I thought it was odd that we didn't have any coverage or sponsorship of [spelling bees] in our area,” she said.

Shimabukuro called Scripps and asked if a library could sponsor a competition. Though no library had ever done so before, Scripps gave her the go-ahead. The Baltimore Sun agreed to fund the bee, and the details of the competition were spelled out.

Events like this are important, Shimabukuro said, because “spelling is becoming a lost art. A lot of kids and adults depend on spell check and it’s not the answer. You can't always have spell check available.”

And in this climate of increasing written communication -- even the SAT now features a writing segment – “It’s very important to know how to write,” she said. “Even if you are bright, if your spelling is off, people still perceive that as a flaw. You put your best foot forward when you spell correctly.”

After (Sydney) Speizman was reinstated in the competition, she put her best foot forward, ticking off “metronome” and “xylograph” to waltz through Rounds 4 and 5 until she came head-to-head against Priyanka Chavan, a fifth-grader from Fulton Elementary School whose gateway to the final round was “amalgam.”

The two duked it out for the championship, gliding through words like “cationic” and “gibbet” and tripping over “vermin,” “acolyte,” and, most contentious, “tilde.”...

Speizman stumbled on “garderobe.” Chavan ticked off the word’s correct nine letters and was then asked to spell “piebald” to win the bee.

Did Chavan know what “piebald” meant? “No,” she said. But she knew how to spell it.

On June 1, Chavan will face more than 250 of the nation’s top spellers -- weeded out from a pool of more than 9 million contestants -- at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

- No Bee-Average Grades Here, Washington Post, March 24, 2005.