To get the better of especially by trickery or cunning.
"To get the better of" is a turn of phrase I first encountered in the pages of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.
(I wince inside when referring to the strip as Peanuts. Schulz himself detested the name, which was decided upon not by him but by an editor. I found the Peanuts title to be irritating long before I knew about Schulz’s feelings on the matter.)
The phrase seemed curious to me. To "get the better of" someone sounded to me like you were summoning the best of that person, not the opposite. "Get" seems like the weak word in the chain, but I eventually understood that it did not mean to summon forth someone’s best qualities but to "be better than."
As is often the case with the Charlie Brown cast of characters, the phrase is remarkably grown for being spoken by such young people. Similar species of sophisticated humor exist in the Bugs Bunny series of cartoons, including Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. Humor in these television cartoons passed me by as a child but brought new life to these cartoons when I got older and caught the jokes. It’s funny to imagine being a child and gaping at the screen, oblivious to the humor but enjoying it anyway.
I believe it was Kristin Chenoweth who astutely discovered that the Peanuts characters were "little adults" as she prepared to play the part of Sally in "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown." I had never heard that phrase before and it seemed to have been perfectly crafted as the best description of the Charlie Brown cast.
It also happened to align with my (unrelated) belief that children should be treated as adults for grown-ups to earn their respect.
