best bib and tucker, one’s

Dressed in one’s finest clothes. A tucker was an  ornamental  piece  of  lace  worn  by  women  in  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- teenth  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,  Massachu- setts). 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.