if there ever were one

English

Phrase

if there ever were one

1. Alternative form of if ever there was one.
   • 1835, [Charles Badham], “Notes”, in Brief Recollections, Chiefly of Italy, by an Amateur, Glasgow: […] Bell and Bain, page 27:

     The Saint, is Ignatius Loyola, the famous Captain General of the Jesuits; a man of genius, if there ever were one;—the painter, Rubens; and this undoubtedly one of the finest of that master’s inimitable works.

   • 1966, Norman Phillips, “Kern River Isabella Lake”, in Map of Kern River, Lake Isabella, Kernville, Wofford-Heights, California (Kym’s Guide: Maps and Charts of Recreation Areas; No. 11), Los Angeles, Calif.: Triumph Press Inc., column 2:

     Discussing trout first, the Kern River in its higher elevations abounds in the choice golden, a trophy fish if there ever were one.

   • 1979, Frank Yerby, chapter 35, in A Darkness at Ingraham’s Crest: A Tale of the Slaveholding South, New York, N.Y.: The Dial Press, →ISBN, page 565:

     […] by convincing her that his dying father, Captain Wallace Bibbs—an upright man if there ever were one!—had left you to him in his Will.

   • 2011, J.T. Ellison, chapter 38, in So Close the Hand of Death, Don Mills, Ont.: Mira Books, →ISBN, page 296:

     That he had planned on being a medical ethicist but instead had been drawn into profiling by Garrett Woods, a Machiavellian man if there ever were one.