"have the best of it" meaning in English

See have the best of it in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: has the best of it [present, singular, third-person], having the best of it [participle, present], had the best of it [participle, past], had the best of it [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|have<has,,had> the best of it}} have the best of it (third-person singular simple present has the best of it, present participle having the best of it, simple past and past participle had the best of it)
  1. To gain the advantage in a contest.
    Sense id: en-have_the_best_of_it-en-verb-~G1~6MP~ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms with placeholder "it"

Download JSON data for have the best of it meaning in English (1.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> the best of it"
      },
      "expansion": "have the best of it (third-person singular simple present has the best of it, present participle having the best of it, simple past and past participle had the best of it)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To gain the advantage in a contest."
      ],
      "id": "en-have_the_best_of_it-en-verb-~G1~6MP~",
      "links": [
        [
          "gain",
          "gain"
        ],
        [
          "advantage",
          "advantage"
        ],
        [
          "contest",
          "contest"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "have the best of it"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had the best of it",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> the best of it"
      },
      "expansion": "have the best of it (third-person singular simple present has the best of it, present participle having the best of it, simple past and past participle had the best of it)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To gain the advantage in a contest."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "gain",
          "gain"
        ],
        [
          "advantage",
          "advantage"
        ],
        [
          "contest",
          "contest"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "have the best of it"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.