Word.ws English Dictionary

best laid plans

best laid plans noun: a proverbial expression used to signify the futility of making detailed plans when the ability to fully or even partially execute them is uncertain.

Noun

best laid plans (singular best laid plan)

  1. (idiomatic) A proverbial expression used to signify the futility of making detailed plans when the ability to fully or even partially execute them is uncertain.

Forms of best laid plans

singularbest laid plan

Origin of best laid plans

Shortened form of “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”, translated from Scots “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley,” from To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough by Robert Burns (text and reading of poem).

Questions about best laid plans

What does best laid plans mean?
Best laid plans means a proverbial expression used to signify the futility of making detailed plans when the ability to fully or even partially execute them is uncertain.
What part of speech is best laid plans?
Best laid plans is a noun.

Words near best laid plans in the dictionary

  1. best hung
  2. best in class
  3. best known
  4. Best Korea
  5. best laid plan
  6. best laid plans
  7. best loved
  8. best maid
  9. best maids
  10. best man
  11. best men

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: best laid plans (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-best laid plans.ogg.

Cite this entry: “best laid plans.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/best_laid_plans. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.