Word.ws English Dictionary

first come first serve

first come first serve is the nonstandard form of first come first served.

Meaning of first come first served

Noun

first come first served (uncountable)

  1. A service policy or distributive rule under which access to a good, service, or decision is allocated according to the chronological order of requests or arrivals, so that earlier claimants receive priority over later ones.

Questions about first come first serve

What is first come first serve the nonstandard form of?
First come first serve is the nonstandard form of first come first served.

Words near first come first serve in the dictionary

  1. first class
  2. first class match
  3. first class matches
  4. first classes
  5. First Coast
  6. first come first serve
  7. first come first served
  8. first come, first served
  9. First Communion
  10. First Communions
  11. first conditional

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first come first serve (page history and authors); first come first served (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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