UPPER CRUST

THE PHRASE upper crust is referred to the aristocracy or the highest social class or group. In the medieval times bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the ‘upper crust.’ The phrase is also often used in reference to the earth’s surface, bread and pies.

Etymology experts, however, say that there’s no real evidence that the phrase has the ‘top of the bread’ origin.

The nearest we can come to that is the earliest known example of the term in print, which does make an oblique connection between the top part of a loaf and the nobility. This is from John Russell’s The boke of nurture, folowyng Englondis gise, circa 1460:

Kutt ye vpper crust for youre souerayne. (that is, Cut the upper crust [of the loaf] for your sovereign)

The term ‘upper crust’ didn’t come to be used figuratively to refer to the aristocrary until the 19th century.

The term had previously been used to refer to the outer crust of the Earth’s surface and, more frequently, a person’s head or hat. That latter was still in use when the ‘aristocracy’ meaning was coined, as is shown by this entry from an edition of Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which was published in the same year as the above reference, 1823: ...but to hear it from the chaffer [mouth] of a rough and ready costardmonger, ogling his Poll from her walker [feet] to her upper crust [head].

The ‘Earth’s surface’ and ‘head/ hat’ meanings connect ‘upper crust’ with ‘top’ and there’s every reason to believe that the present application of the term to members of society is another use of that same metaphor.