first
Part of speech: adj
adv
noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: ball-games
baseball
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
Etymology: 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”).
Base: fore
Affixes: -est
Inflected forms:
form: firstmost
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: 1st
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: Ist
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: I
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: I.
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: furst
pos: adj
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: firste
pos: adj
tags: alternative
archaic
form: fyrst
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: fyrste
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: 1st
pos: adv
tags: alternative
form: Ist
pos: adv
tags: alternative
form: I
pos: adv
tags: alternative
form: I.
pos: adv
tags: alternative
form: furst
pos: adv
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: firste
pos: adv
tags: alternative
archaic
form: fyrst
pos: adv
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: fyrste
pos: adv
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: firsts
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: 1st
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: Ist
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: I
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: I.
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: furst
pos: noun
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: firste
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
form: fyrst
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: fyrste
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: Preceding all others of a series or kind; the ordinal of one; earliest.
pos: adj
tags: no-comparative
examples: Hancock was first to arrive.
The first day of September 2013 was a Sunday.
I was the first runner to reach the finish line, and won the race.
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.
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).
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.
gloss: Most eminent or exalted; most excellent; chief; highest.
pos: adj
tags: no-comparative
examples: Demosthenes was the first orator of Greece.
the first violinist
1784: William Jones, The Description and Use of a New Portable Orrery, &c., PREFACE
THE favourable reception the Orrery has met with from Perſons of the firſt diſtinction, and from Gentlemen and Ladies in general, has induced me to add to it ſeveral new improvements in order to give it a degree of Perfection; and diſtinguiſh it from others; which by Piracy, or Imitation, may be introduced to the Public.
It rose to be the first of pastoral regions, and continued until after the gold discovery to be the land of squatterdom.
The French openings decided that satin gowns, suits, wraps and even hats were to be in first fashion this autumn.
gloss: Of or belonging to a first family.
pos: adj
tags: no-comparative
examples: First Cat; First Daughter; First Dog; First Son
gloss: Coming right after the zeroth in things that use zero-based numbering.
pos: adj
tags: no-comparative
gloss: Before anything else; firstly.
pos: adv
tags: not-comparable
examples: Clean the sink first, before you even think of starting to cook.
I plunged nose first into the water.
That concertina was a wonder in its way. The handles that was on it first was wore out long ago, and he'd made new ones of braided rope yarn. And the bellows was patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls.
Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia.
gloss: For the first time.
pos: adv
tags: not-comparable
examples: I first witnessed a death when I was nine years old.
gloss: The person or thing in the first position.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: He was the first to complete the course.
Study gives strength to the mind; conversation, grace: the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness: one gives substance and form to the statue, the other polishes it.
gloss: The first gear of an engine.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
gloss: Something that has never happened before; a new occurrence.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: This is a first. For once he has nothing to say.
I remember other firsts: how I wussily asked her out the first time, and the first time I told her I loved her.
gloss: First base.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: There was a close play at first.
gloss: A first-class honours degree.
pos: noun
tags: UK
colloquial
countable
examples: [Stephen Hawking] […] would go to Cambridge, he said, if they gave him a first, and stay at Oxford if they gave him a second. He got a first.
gloss: A first-edition copy of some publication.
pos: noun
tags: colloquial
countable
gloss: A fraction whose (integer) denominator ends in the digit 1.
pos: noun
tags: countable
in-compounds
uncountable
examples: one forty-first of the estate
Related words: for
fore
Translations:
lang: Finnish
word: yhdesosa
lang: Hungarian
word: -egyed