hands down favourite
the absolute favourite
TRANSLATION
hands down favourite = der absolute Liebling (DH) --- GOOGLE INDEX hands down favourite/favorite (British/American): approximately 80,000 hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
HD-DVD is already the HANDS DOWN FAVORITE in the European market.
(www.endgadget.com)
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(Weihenstephan Hefeweissbier) is my HANDS DOWN FAVORITE bottled wheat beer, period. Unfortunately it's hard to find on tap in the Mid-Michigan area. It’s the king of Bavarian style wheat beers!
(from a forum discussion at www.beeradvocate.com)
(www.endgadget.com)
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(Weihenstephan Hefeweissbier) is my HANDS DOWN FAVORITE bottled wheat beer, period. Unfortunately it's hard to find on tap in the Mid-Michigan area. It’s the king of Bavarian style wheat beers!
(from a forum discussion at www.beeradvocate.com)
Did you
know?
hands down favourite/favorite
catch phrase
- the top favourite, the absolute favourite
(DH)
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WORD ORIGIN
Hands down comes from the phrase to "win hands down", meaning to win something easily or with little effort. Thus, in the phrase "hands down favourite", hands down is used to emphasise that something is easily - or without dispute - the favourite.
The phrase to "win hands down" originated from horse racing. Jockeys have to keep a tight hold on the reins in order to encourage the horse to run. If the jockey is so far ahead of the pack with his horse that he can slow down and still win, he can then drop his hands and loosen the reins - hence winning the race 'hands down'. This is recorded from the mid 19th century.
We can all name favourite movies, travel destinations, cars, football teams, or as we noted in one of the sample sentences, sometimes beer. I asked one of my American colleagues, a resident of Germany for many years, if he had a hands down favourite beer. His response: "Let me just say there aren’t any American beers on my list."
He then commented that given the American reputation for brewing watered-down ale, it’s surprising that German immigrants started many of the major breweries in the United States. The Reinheitsgebot obviously never gained footing in the U.S. Instead, quality took a back seat to profits and mass production. Fortunately for Americans (and German visitors to the U.S.), there are meanwhile plenty of export beers available in the U.S., including the likes of Paulaner, Spaten and Warsteiner. There has also been a resurgence of so-called microbreweries since the 1980s. Many offer excellent beers and have gone to great lengths to create funny and oftentimes bizarre names for their products:
Monkey Knife Fight, Nodding Head Brewing, Philadelphia PA
Blithering Idiot Barley Wine, Weyerbacher Brewing , Easton PA
Lifeboat Ale, Titanic Brewery, Coral Gables FL
Coyote Western Ale, White Pelican American Pale, Falcon Red, Big Horn Nut Brown, and Black Seal Stout, Rock Bottom Brewery, Portland OR
90 Shilling, Easy Street Wheat, Levity Ale, Cutthroat Porter and Isolation Ale, Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins CO
Immort Ale, Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton DE
Seriously Bad Elf, Shelton Brothers Brewery, Belchertown MA
If you are considering starting your own microbrewery, but don’t have the money to pay a marketing agency to come up with a good name, we found a random beer name generator on the Internet (www.strangebrew.ca/beername.php). Our first couple of tries produced the following suggestions:
Spiced Irish Bavarian Dunkelweizen
Curious Tornado Pale Ale
As Shakespeare could have said, "A beer by any other name tastes as good."
Cheers!
(sources: The Phrase Finder, www.realbeer.com)
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IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"My hands down favourite is the small pub around the corner from our office. They serve a really good pale ale."
catch phrase
- the top favourite, the absolute favourite
(DH)
---
WORD ORIGIN
Hands down comes from the phrase to "win hands down", meaning to win something easily or with little effort. Thus, in the phrase "hands down favourite", hands down is used to emphasise that something is easily - or without dispute - the favourite.
The phrase to "win hands down" originated from horse racing. Jockeys have to keep a tight hold on the reins in order to encourage the horse to run. If the jockey is so far ahead of the pack with his horse that he can slow down and still win, he can then drop his hands and loosen the reins - hence winning the race 'hands down'. This is recorded from the mid 19th century.
We can all name favourite movies, travel destinations, cars, football teams, or as we noted in one of the sample sentences, sometimes beer. I asked one of my American colleagues, a resident of Germany for many years, if he had a hands down favourite beer. His response: "Let me just say there aren’t any American beers on my list."
He then commented that given the American reputation for brewing watered-down ale, it’s surprising that German immigrants started many of the major breweries in the United States. The Reinheitsgebot obviously never gained footing in the U.S. Instead, quality took a back seat to profits and mass production. Fortunately for Americans (and German visitors to the U.S.), there are meanwhile plenty of export beers available in the U.S., including the likes of Paulaner, Spaten and Warsteiner. There has also been a resurgence of so-called microbreweries since the 1980s. Many offer excellent beers and have gone to great lengths to create funny and oftentimes bizarre names for their products:
Monkey Knife Fight, Nodding Head Brewing, Philadelphia PA
Blithering Idiot Barley Wine, Weyerbacher Brewing , Easton PA
Lifeboat Ale, Titanic Brewery, Coral Gables FL
Coyote Western Ale, White Pelican American Pale, Falcon Red, Big Horn Nut Brown, and Black Seal Stout, Rock Bottom Brewery, Portland OR
90 Shilling, Easy Street Wheat, Levity Ale, Cutthroat Porter and Isolation Ale, Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins CO
Immort Ale, Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton DE
Seriously Bad Elf, Shelton Brothers Brewery, Belchertown MA
If you are considering starting your own microbrewery, but don’t have the money to pay a marketing agency to come up with a good name, we found a random beer name generator on the Internet (www.strangebrew.ca/beername.php). Our first couple of tries produced the following suggestions:
Spiced Irish Bavarian Dunkelweizen
Curious Tornado Pale Ale
As Shakespeare could have said, "A beer by any other name tastes as good."
Cheers!
(sources: The Phrase Finder, www.realbeer.com)
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"My hands down favourite is the small pub around the corner from our office. They serve a really good pale ale."
