English · Idiom Candidate

six of the best

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

a caning as a punishment, typically six strokes

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

hình phạt quất六 lần

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: six of the best strokes

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Judge for yourself here's six of the best from our glum friend: On Radio Merseyside's Billy Butler and Wally Scott: ‘ All that pair do is laugh.

Six of the best or pieces of eight?

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “six of the best” mean?

a caning as a punishment, typically six strokes Literally: six of the best strokes

Is “six of the best” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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