Word.ws English Dictionary

first-run

first-run adjective: made available for public screening for the first time.

Adjective

first-run (not comparable)

  1. made available for public screening for the first time
  2. screening first-run films
    • How long a movie stayed in the First Run theaters depended entirely on how big a hit it was. [...] If a movie was not a hit, it most often left the first run theater after two weeks and disappeared seemingly forever.2013 June 6, “How Movies Used to Be Released Part I -- Roadshow Releases & First Run Theaters”, in Richard Rothrock, archived from the original on 03 May 2025
  3. broadcast or streamed for the first time on any broadcast or streaming service (including films that are previously released theatrically)
    • [...] Netflix swooped in to take first-run rights to season two mere weeks before the streaming giant had any idea how the series would perform on its platform.2019 January 15, Knight, Rosie, “‘You,’ a Dud for Lifetime, Has Become Netflix’s Latest Water-Cooler Hit”, in The Hollywood Reporter

Forms of first-run

alternative formfirst run

Questions about first-run

What does first-run mean?
First-run means made available for public screening for the first time.
What part of speech is first-run?
First-run is an adjective.

Words near first-run in the dictionary

  1. first-rate
  2. first-rateness
  3. first-rater
  4. first-raters
  5. first-rates
  6. first-run
  7. first-sale doctrine
  8. first-string
  9. first-stringer
  10. first-stringers
  11. first-teamer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first-run (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “first-run.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/first-run. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.