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Upper Crust

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The lions or crack men of the day. The phrase was first used in Sam Slick. The upper crust was at one time the part of the loaf placed before the most honoured guests. Thus, in Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruinge (carving) we have these directions: “Then take a lofe in your lyfte hande, and pare ye lofe rounde about; then cut the ouer-cruste to your souerayne …” Furnwall, in Manners and Meales, etc., says the same thing—“Kutt the vpper cruste for your souerayne.”

“I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Shiel, Russell, Macaulay, old Joe, and so on. They are all upper crust here.”

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Unrighteous [Adokimos]
Unwashed
Up
Up a Tree
Up the Spout
Up to Snuff
Up to the Hub
Up to the Mark
Up-turning of his Glass
Upas-tree or Poison-tree of Macassar
Upper Crust
Upper Storey
Upper Ten Thousand or The Upper Ten
Uproar
Upsee-Dutch
Upset Price
Urbi et Orbi [To Rome and the rest of the world]
Urd [The Past]
Urda or Urdan Fount (The)
Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda
Urgan