Are you ready to find out everything you need to know about the basic French expression "La crème de la crème"? To be clear, this includes a full explanation of what it is and how to use it in a conversation with an audio example. And because we want to help you on your learning journey, we also added some useful stuff like slow pronunciation audio, dialogue example, synonym and more!
Translation : The best of the best
Literal meaning : The cream of the cream
Register : Neutral - Basic
Slow
Normal
IPA : / la kʁɛm də la kʁɛm /
It literally means:
The cream here refers to the fatter and best part of the milk that "floats" on the surface. And since the common belief is: "The higher, the better" the cream is a metaphor for "the best part".
And if you process this cream again and keep only the creamiest part of it, you get "La crème de la crème" → "The best of the best / The elite"
Use this expression when you want to highlight how amazingly good something is, when it's impossible to find anything better. This something can be a person, a group of people but also an object or even something immaterial like a brand for example.
One more *completely random example*...
You can even use: "Pour apprendre le Français, All About French c'est la crème de la crème" → "For learning French, All About French is the cream of the cream"
Dialogue
Toi aussi tu as un prix Nobel ?
You won a Nobel prize too?
Oui
Yes
Nous sommes la crème de la crème !
We are the cream of the cream!*
Learn French with Audio Stories
Learn French the easy way with our French - English
parallel texts with slow French audio
Start Learning 
