Word.ws English Dictionary

first-year

first-year is the alternative form of first year.

Meaning of first year

Noun

first year (countable and uncountable, plural first years)

  1. (countable) A first-year student.
    • The obvious topic for this issue is the new first year students. What are they like? It would be easy to say that they seem to be a typical mob of apathetic new students. It would be more correct however, to say that they are simply a typical bunch of first years. They were given one of the best...1969 March 13, Charlie Dickins, “[Editorial]”, in Woroni, volume 21, number 2, Canberra: A.N.U. Students’ Association; Canberra Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd., page 2
  2. (Philippines, historical, uncountable) The first year of high school; seventh grade (now grade 7 of junior high school).
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see first, year.
    • The use of sterilized compost when planting should minimize problems with weeds, at least for the first years.1992, Christopher Brickell, editor, The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening, London: BCA by arrangement with Dorling Kindersley, published 1994, →ISBN, page 207, column 1

Forms of first-year

pluralfirst-years

Questions about first-year

What is first-year the alternative form of?
First-year is the alternative form of first year.

Words near first-year in the dictionary

  1. first-waver
  2. first-wavers
  3. first-world problem
  4. first-world problems
  5. first-worldish
  6. first-year
  7. first-years
  8. firstable
  9. firstborn
  10. firstborns
  11. firstcomer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first-year (page history and authors); first year (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.

Last updated:

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