Cream of the Crop: How Do You Define This Trendy Idiom in English

Cream of the Crop Meaning! The following lesson provides the definition of the popular idiom “Cream of the Crop” with useful example sentences and several alternative ways to express this idiom.

Table of Contents

Cream of the Crop Meaning

What Does Cream of the Crop Mean?

As we know, in a batch of milk, the cream is the most concentrated, fattiest, most desirable part and it tends to rise to the top. So, in the phrase “cream of the crop”, the noun cream has been used to mean “the best”. For the whole phrase, being the cream of the crop is being the best or choicest of a particular group, people or a particular type.

For instance, if someone says: “You’re the cream of the crop!”, then you’re better, smarter, sexier, more athletic, and cooler than everyone else.

Alternative Form

Cream rises to the top

Example Sentences

David and Tom are the cream of the crop in our class.
The students at this college are the cream of the crop.
Sarah is really the cream of the crop.
A marathon man in training to be cream of the crop.
He has always turned out teams who, until recently, were the cream of the crop in terms of style.
These delicious strawberries are the cream of the crop.
We’re going to be looking at the top banana, the big kahuna, the cream of the crop.
Tom was the cream of the crop in our team.
The cream of the crop was selected to play for the national team.
They hoped to hire only the cream of the crop for the new project team.