The expression “the best thing since sliced bread” is used to describe something extremely useful, innovative, or impressive. It is often said about a product, idea, invention, or convenience that people believe has greatly improved everyday life.
In use
Many people say smartphones are the best thing since sliced bread.
My family thinks 10-minute grocery delivery is the best thing since sliced bread.
The new language-learning app has been hailed as the best thing since sliced bread.
The phrase originated in the United States after commercially sliced bread became popular in the late 1920s. Inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder developed a bread-slicing machine, and bakeries promoted sliced bread as a major convenience. Before this, bread was sold in whole loaves that customers had to slice themselves
The Chillicothe Baking Company was the first to sell “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread.” The convenience was so revolutionary that advertisements began marketing the product as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry.” By the 1930s the phrase had entered everyday speech and became synonymous with anything considered revolutionary or highly convenient. Nearly a century later, the phrase still survives as a tribute to one of the simplest but most influential everyday innovations.
