first
IPA: fˈɝst
noun
- (uncountable) The person or thing in the first position.
- (uncountable) The first gear of an engine.
- (countable) Something that has never happened before; a new occurrence.
- (countable, baseball) first base
- (countable, Britain, colloquial) A first-class honours degree.
- (countable, colloquial) A first-edition copy of some publication.
- (in combination) A fraction whose (integer) denominator ends in the digit 1.
- (obsolete) Time; time granted; respite.
- A surname.
verb
- (rare) To propose (a new motion) in a meeting, which must subsequently be seconded.
adjective
- Preceding all others of a series or kind; the ordinal of one; earliest.
- Most eminent or exalted; most excellent; chief; highest.
- Of or belonging to a first family.
- Coming right after the zeroth in things that use zero-based numbering.
adverb
- Before anything else; firstly.
- For the first time.
- (Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, nonstandard) Now.
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Examples of "first" in Sentences
- Of course, at such first meeting, all the preliminaries prescribed as forming the _first_ movement of the act should be carried out _to the limit_.
- A mortality of 53 for the first four years of life is smaller than any district known in the United States, even to-day, can show for the _first_ year of life _alone_.
- I recognize this puts me a bit at odds with the first commenter, but Epicurious is usually my *first* archive to search, given how it draws on decades of recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit.
- Promoted to Headline (H3) on 6/26/08: Why were 'first responders' de-contaminated at the Pentagon? yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = 'Why were \'first responders\' de-contaminated at the Pentagon? '
- The first legislature of Virginia was convened under the administration of Governor Sir George Yeardley, in the year 1626; but before this we find, during the _first_ administration of Governor
- She feared that when for the first time I found myself not _first_ considered in all arrangements, I might fail in those particular points of conduct in which she was most anxious I should triumph.
- A lot of this work has produced some exciting physical chemistry including the first observation of gravitational separation of isotopes and gases in a column..first predicted by Gibbs and observed many tens of decades later.
- Aesthetic_ that the _concept_ depends upon the _intuition_, which is the first degree, the primary and indispensable thing, so it is proved in the _Philosophy of the Practical_ that _Morality_ or _Ethic_ depends upon _Economic_, which is the _first_ degree of the practical activity.
- The music played in the orchestra was very beautiful; and the officer, who had behaved so politely to us in permitting the gates, on the first night of our arrival, to be opened, seated on a high stool, rose conspicuously above the other musicians, and seemed indeed the _first fiddle_.
- To manure their date-groves they use the fins of a species of ray fish called _awwal_, steeped in water till they are putrid; _awwal_, by the way, was an ancient name of the Island of Bahrein, perhaps because it was the first island of the group in size, _awwal_ in Arabic meaning _first_.
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