Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's best foot forward

put one's best foot forward verb: to show oneself in the best or most positive way possible; to make a favorable impression.

Verb

put one's best foot forward (third-person singular simple present puts one's best foot forward, present participle putting one's best foot forward, simple past and past participle put one's best foot forward)

  1. (idiomatic) To show oneself in the best or most positive way possible; to make a favorable impression.
    • Try to put your best foot forward at all times during a job interview.
    • Unsurprisingly, Perry puts her best foot forward on opener “Never Really Over,” a song that not only maintains a catchy, hummable refrain, but also ironically doubles as a sort of mission statement for the artist.2020 September 27, Alex McLevy, “With Smile, Katy Perry is desperately trying to have fun again”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 28 Aug 2020

Forms of put one's best foot forward

third-person singular presentputs one's best foot forward
present participleputting one's best foot forward
past participleput one's best foot forward
pastput one's best foot forward
alternative formput one's best foot foremost

Questions about put one's best foot forward

What does put one's best foot forward mean?
Put one's best foot forward means to show oneself in the best or most positive way possible; to make a favorable impression.
What part of speech is put one's best foot forward?
Put one's best foot forward is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's best foot forward?
The past tense of put one's best foot forward is put one's best foot forward.

Words near put one's best foot forward in the dictionary

  1. put one past
  2. put one's affairs in order
  3. put one's ass on the line
  4. put one's back into
  5. put one's best foot foremost
  6. put one's best foot forward
  7. put one's cards on the table
  8. put one's ducks in a row
  9. put one's feet up
  10. put one's finger in a hole
  11. put one's finger in the dyke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's best foot forward (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-put one's best foot forward.ogg.

Cite this entry: “put one's best foot forward.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_one%27s_best_foot_forward. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.