English Idiomatic Expression: "To The Best of My Knowledge"

By Robby

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Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog!

Today I decided to bring another English idiomatic expression video to you and this time around the video in question is – no, not the video in question, the phrase, the expression in question!

Sorry guys for making this mistake but I’m just going to leave it here on record so that you can see that Robby is not really afraid of making mistakes, he practices what he preaches and that’s the path that you should be going down as well if you’re anything serious about your English fluency improvement that is, right?

So basically don’t be afraid, don’t be embarrassed of making mistakes, saying something wrong, going back, correcting yourself, it’s all part of the game.

Anyway, going back to the original subject, the expression in question for today is “to the best of my knowledge”, right? So if you’re interested in learning how to use this particular English idiomatic expression, just bear with me for a few more moments and everything is going to become crystal clear to you my friends!

Example #1

So welcome back guys. Now, basically how to use the idiomatic expression “to the best of my knowledge”? Let me give you a very simple example sentence, right? To the best of my knowledge I haven’t actually recorded a video about the English idiomatic expression “to the best of my knowledge”, right? It’s like a joke but anyway, I hope I made you laugh!

So I hope that you could clearly understand what way the phrase “to the best of my knowledge” is used in this particular example, right? It’s basically as if I were to say as far as I’m aware, right? Same thing, right? Much of a muchness which is an expression I learned years ago which means that the two things are pretty much the same, right? Much of a muchness. It doesn’t matter which way you go, right?

So as far as I’m aware I haven’t recorded a video about the phrase “to the best of my knowledge”. “To the best of my knowledge” I haven’t recorded and so on and so forth. So pretty much the same meaning, right is carried by both of these phrases. Speaking of which, I actually recorded the videos about similar phrases, right? Such as “if I’m not mistaken” and “correct me if I’m wrong”, right? And you may want to click on this link which is going to take you to the respective page on my blog where you’ll be able to watch a video about those two phrases.

And actually all these four phrases “to the best of my knowledge”, “as far as I’m aware”, “if I’m not mistaken”, “correct me if I’m wrong” they’re pretty much interchangeable. Having said that, I have to admit that “if I’m not mistaken”, “correct me if I’m wrong” kind of involves a little bit more doubt factor, right? In that particular situation I’m probably only 50-50 sure that what I’m saying is right or 60-40 or something like that, right?

But “to the best of my knowledge” that’s quite a big certainty, right? So whatever you’re saying, whatever statement you’re making you’re pretty sure of that, right?

Example #2

And now let me just give you a few more example sentences so that you can develop the feeling, the instinct for using this particular phrase, right? Let’s say you’re showing someone how to install a Windows operating system, right? As a matter of fact that’s something that I did today in the college, right?

I was guiding one person through all the steps necessary to install – what was it? – rooting an active directory services on the Windows 2012 server machine, right? And I was going through the wizard and he was asking “Hold on a second, do you see those options there, Robby? Do you not have to tick them as well?” And I said to him “Listen, to the best of my knowledge you just ignore them. You just go next, next, next, bam, bam, bam, install, that’s going to be done for you.” Right?

So that was a typical example. So you’re basically saying to someone “Listen, to the best of my knowledge this is the way it’s done.” And this is basically when it comes to certain procedures and whatnot. That’s when you typically would be using this phrase in your work environment, right? Someone asks you for advice and they kind of slightly doubt that, they question it and then you say “Well, to the best of my knowledge that’s the way it works.” If you’re in doubt you may want to ask someone else but to the best of my knowledge, as far as I’m aware that’s the way it is, right?

Example #3

And let me think… can I think of another example? I suppose you could use this one when talking about some facts, right? When you’re saying something that you might have read before, that someone might have told you before but you’re not a 100% sure of that you can say “Well, to the best of my knowledge you’re not supposed to pour boiling water over tea. If you put your teabag in a tea cup you’re not supposed to boil water and pour it immediately over the tea, right? You have to – I suppose – cool it down for something like 2 or 3 minutes or something like that so that its temperature drops from a 100 degrees Celsius down to 95 or something. And I think I’m pretty sure that I read it somewhere. So to the best of my knowledge that’s the way you go about making tea in the ideal set of circumstances, right?”

Example #4

And to finish off this video I should probably come up with another example. Well, let me see, let’s say for example that you’re chatting with a friend of yours and that person – basically it’s an informal conversation – that person, that friend of yours is saying that he thinks that – let’s assume for argument’s sake that your friend’s name is Mark and you’re talking about Sally. And Mark is telling you that Sally is going out with someone, right? And then you’re saying to your friend “Now listen, buddy, that’s not the way it is. To the best of my knowledge Sally only broke up with Peter last week so there is no way she could be possibly going out with someone. It’s only been a week since her breakup. So to the best of my knowledge that’s not true. I don’t know who might have told you that but that’s just rumors is all, right?”

So this was the last and final example of using the idiomatic expression to the best of my knowledge in a conversation. So please make sure that you do a lot of spoken English self-practicing where you use this particular phrase and also if you happen to have conversations with other people don’t hesitate to use this particular phrase in your conversations to make sure that that speech pattern is imprinted into your brain and into your mouth which is the most important part of the whole English fluency thing, right?

So thanks for watching this video! Obviously if you have any questions post them in the comment section below. Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already done so and chat to you soon again. Bye-bye!

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