Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. First in time or place.
- adj. Ahead of all others, especially in position or rank; paramount. See Synonyms at chief.
- adv. In the front or first position.
- adv. So as to be most important.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- First in place, time, quality, station, honor, or dignity.
Wiktionary
- adj. first, either in time or in space
- adj. of a higher rank or position; paramount
- adj. nautical closest to the bow
- adv. in front
- adv. prominently forward
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. First in time or place; most advanced; chief in rank or dignity.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. before anything else
- adv. prominently forward
- adj. situated closest to the bow
- adj. preceding all others in spatial position
- adj. ranking above all others
Etymologies
- From Old English formest, fyrmest ("earliest, first, most prominent"), from the Proto-Germanic superlative *formo- (related to Old English fruma ("beginning")), with the additional superlative suffix -est. Compare Old Saxon formo ("first"), Old High German fruma ("advantage"), cf. Old Frisian formest, Gothic frumists; compare also Latin prīmus as an Indo-European cognate. Corresponds to fore + -most. See also first. (Wiktionary)
- Alteration of Middle English formest, first, from Old English; see per1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Among them, the foremost is the old commandment, as old as the oldest documents of any nation: Thou shalt not kill!”
“First and foremost is the time he played Howard Payne, the maniacal disgruntled ex-cop, against Keanu Reeves in Speed (1994).”
““First and foremost is instituting a more stringent employee-training regimen and issuing a press release about it.””
“First and foremost is that program at Naperville Central HS, in Naperville, Illinois.”
The Washington Post: How Joel Klein insulted physical education teachers
“My complaint with the book, first and foremost, is the “tag line” on the cover of the paperback (not sure if it was on the hardcover): Has history been wrong for 200 years?”
“First and foremost is that you want to recognize that mental health problems, including addictions, are among the most common medical problems that exist!”
The Huffington Post: Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: Finding the Right Psychiatrist
“I want them to be touched by it because to me novel writing, first and foremost, is storytelling.”
“That being first and foremost, is why JBT works as a brand.”
I NEED YOUR OPINIONS! What should the future of Johnny B. look like? | Johnny B. Truant
“First and foremost is that all eBooks must meet the different needs of students with learning challenges.”
“Some of them grew first and foremost from the setting.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘foremost’.
-
RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
Laban, circumcise, beget, Esau, Rebekah, speckle, Sodom, Pharaoh, Canaanite, Canaan, Jacob, Lot and 1286 more...
-
I am : grand
grand, majestic, splendid, splendorous, magnificent, august, austere, spectacular, wondrous, awesome, redoubtable, formidable and 30 more...
-
Fore!
That great old English prefix, quaint almost by default!
foredoom, forename, foretoken, foremast, forebear, foresee, forecastle, forestay, foreskin, foretell, foreshadow, foreclose and 79 more...
-
GCI
spinster, maiden, happy-go-lucky, homonym, ill-at-ease, saw red, out of sorts, hot under the collar, taken aback, pen-names, alias, shoelaces and 378 more...
-
eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
-
hard to sense
somewhat, somewhere, elsewhere, whereby, likewise, spite, ever, along, otherwise, whatever, whichever, hitherto and 116 more...
-
amy's GRE 2012
gimmicks, kowtow, unpretentious, skeptical, cynical, somber, prevaricate, equivocate, requisite, embellish, impregnable, procrastinate and 307 more...
-
Ptolemy's Gate
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's book, Ptolemy's Gate.
fall afoul, fleet, tamarisk, krait, inkstone, hotted up, down-market, have a truck with, brio, fatalistic, knock-kneed, conserve and 210 more...
-
lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 889 more...
-
my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
-
for words
based upon per- indo-european root
turnverein, veer, frump, far, per, paramount, paramour, parget, parterre, parvenu, perissodactyl, palanquin and 133 more...
-
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Words used in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
decadence, emancipation, nostalgia, abounded, modernity, revolution, famine, conservative, privy, vied, nascent, correspondence and 211 more...
-
2nd 30 words a minute list
depreciate, unforbearing, unscrupulous, scrupulous, scruple, to make scruple, penitence, penitent, contrite, queer, faggot, epithet and 25 more...
-
Benladen's Words
phallocentric, disproportionate, bewave, distraught, uncoordinated, disgraceful, bewayne, beweltered, sensical, cunt, extrapolate, dysphoria and 86 more...
-
the most
or more correctly the -ost
starost, geognost, needscost, alecost, anagnost, compost, harmost, endmost, outmost, almost, innermost, hithermost and 15 more...
-
Rip Van Winkle
descry, chivalrous, henpecked, domestic tribulation, obsequious, conciliating, malleable, curtain lecture, termagant, uxorious, squabble, dodge and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for foremost.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.