AT BEST • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of At best

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/æt bɛst/ Listen

noun

Best n. Utmost; highest endeavor or state; most nearly perfect thing, or being, or action; as, to do one's best; to the best of our ability.

At best, in the utmost degree or extent applicable to the case; under the most favorable circumstances; as, life is at best very short.

For best, finally. (Obs.) "Those constitutions... are now established for best, and not to be mended."

To get the best of, to gain an advantage over, whether fairly or unfairly.

To make the best of.

(a)

To improve to the utmost; to use or dispose of to the greatest advantage. "Let there be freedom to carry their commodities where they can make the best of them."

(b)

To reduce to the least possible inconvenience; as, to make the best of ill fortune or a bad bargain.

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Etymology of 'At best'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"At best" Quotes from Famous Books

... more temperate climates at such a season. It was fiercely bright against the melting snows, with a steely chill that entirely lacked the gracious promise of budding trees and tender shooting grass. At best it spoke of the final passing of the wastes of ...

— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... forbid such practices as necromancy, or a "pretended" communication with the dead?—Because it would be only a pretense at best; for such communication is impossible. The dead are unconscious in their graves, and have no power to communicate with the living. Let this truth be once established, and it is the death-blow to the claims of Spiritualism, in the cases ...

— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... was not all plain sailing. The air is an unstable medium at best, and quite without warning, at an acute angle, he entered an aerial tide which he recognized as the gulf stream of wind that poured through the drafty-mouthed Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first—a sudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the monoplane and threatened to capsize ...

— The Night-Born • Jack London

... field literally walks in darkness, and his success will be in proportion to the facility with which his mental vision can pierce the veil. His manoeuvres, to a greater or less degree, must always be based on probabilities, for his most recent reports almost invariably relate to events which, at best, are several hours old; and, meanwhile, what has the enemy been doing? This it is the most essential part of his business to discover, and it is a matter of hard thinking and sound judgment. From the indications furnished by his reports, ...

— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... the latter, demanded, or rather extorted, douceurs from the exhausted and almost ruined German petitioners; who in the end were rewarded for all their meanness and for all their expenses with promises at best; as the new plan of supplementary indemnities was, on the very day proposed for its final arrangement, postponed by the desire of the Emperor of the French, until further orders. This provoking delay could no more be ...

— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

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