best practice

noun

plural best practices

: a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption

… private instructional management will strengthen the public schools by providing examples of best practice from which the public schools can learn.

—Denis P. Doyle, Phi Delta Kappan, October 1994

Prabhakar and his colleagues started by looking at best practices developed by other biometrics researchers.

—Joshua J. Romero, IEEE Spectrum, May 2011

Countries from Canada to Australia to Singapore implement smart policies and copy best practices from around the world. We bicker and remain paralyzed.

—Fareed Zakaria, Time, 15 Aug. 2011

There is no doubt that hospitals are powerful and dangerous places, that "best practices" are not always followed …

—Dena Rifkin, M.D., The New York Times, 17 Nov. 2009

One of the major trends in U.S. health care is "evidence-based medicine," which calls for making medical choices by comparing empirical evidence about an individual patient's condition to a larger body of best practices.

—Luke Mitchell, Harper's, February 2009

… he proposed limiting corporate tax breaks to those businesses willing to abide by "best practices" when it comes to labor relations.

—Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, 21 Aug. 2000

Word History

First Known Use

1927, in the meaning defined above

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