First Meaning

/fɜːst/
A1

Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

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adjPreceding all others of a series or kind; the ordinal of one; earliest.

adjMost eminent or exalted; most excellent; chief; highest.

First, I'm going to do an outline of my new website.
Wash before first wearing.
I was the first in my family to go to college.
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
She arrived at the finish line ____, winning the gold medal ahead of everyone else.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She won ____ prize in the regional science fair for her innovative project on solar energy.

From Middle English first, furst, ferst, fyrst, from Old English fyrest, from Proto-West Germanic *furist, from Proto-Germanic *furistaz (“first, foremost”), superlative of Proto-Germanic *furai, *furi (“before”), from Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- (“before”), from *per- (“before; first”), equivalent to fore + -est. Cognates Cognate with Scots first (“first”), Dutch voorste (“foremost, first”), vorst (“prince”), German Fürst (“chief, prince”, literally “first (born)”), Limburgish Vürsch (“prince”), Luxembourgish viischt (“anterior; forward”), Vilamovian fiyśt, fjəšt, fjyśt, fjyšt (“prince”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål først (“first”), Faroese and Icelandic fyrstur (“first”), Norwegian Nynorsk fyrst, først (“first”), Swedish först (“first”); also Latin prīnceps (“first, foremost; chief”), Greek παρ' (par'), παρά (pará, “despite; less”), Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀫 (pa-ro, “from”), Albanian parë (“first; chief, main”), Latgalian pyrmais (“first”), Latvian pirmais (“first; foremost”), Lithuanian pirmas (“first; primary”), Bulgarian пъ́рви (pǎ́rvi), пръ́в (prǎ́v, “first”), Czech and Slovak prvý (“first”), Macedonian прв (prv), први (prvi, “first”), Polish piersy, pierwszy, pirszy (“first”), Russian пе́рвый (pérvyj, “first”), Serbo-Croatian пр̑вӣ, pȓvī (“first”), Slovene prvi (“first”), Armenian հարավ (harav, “south”), Avestan 𐬞𐬀𐬎𐬭𐬎𐬎𐬀 (paᵘruua, “before, first”), Tocharian A pärwat (“first”), Tocharian B parwe (“first”), Sanskrit पूर्व (pūrva, “before”).

"Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines." — 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices)." — 2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2022:
"Consequently, in the initial position the white pieces and pawns are placed on the first and second ranks; the black pieces and pawns on the eighth and seventh ranks." — 2022, “2023 Laws of Chess”, in FIDE, page 21:
"It rose to be the first of pastoral regions, and continued until after the gold discovery to be the land of squatterdom." — 1880, S. W. Silver, Handbook for Australia & New Zealand, Co, page 146:
"The French openings decided that satin gowns, suits, wraps and even hats were to be in first fashion this autumn." — 1916 September 11, Anne Rittenhouse, “Dress: One-piece Frocks of Satin in Neutral Colors, With Bits of Colored Embroidery”, in The Journal and Tribune, volume 30, number 235, Knoxville, Tenn., page 6:

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CEFR Practice Quiz
She arrived at the finish line ____, winning the gold medal ahead of everyone else.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She won ____ prize in the regional science fair for her innovative project on solar energy.

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