Word.ws English Dictionary

first in first out

first in first out noun: a method of inventory accounting that values items withdrawn from inventory at the cost of the oldest item assumed to remain in inventory.

Noun

first in first out (uncountable)

  1. A method of inventory accounting that values items withdrawn from inventory at the cost of the oldest item assumed to remain in inventory.
  2. A policy of assigning priority to tasks and assignments that have arrived for service first.
    • To the onlooker, and particularly to those whose memories go back to pre-grouping days, the modern cavalcade of "V2s" and "B1s" is apt to become a little monotonous; but to any running man the general utility characteristics of these two classes are a perfect godsend at times of exceptional...1949 November and December, O. S. Nock, “Twenty-Four Hours at York—2”, in Railway Magazine, pages 357–358
  3. A type of queue data structure in which the oldest added items are retrieved first.
    Synonyms:
    FIFO

Synonyms of first in first out

Forms of first in first out

alternative formfirst-in-first-out
alternative formfirst-in first-out
alternative formfirst in, first out
alternative formfirst-in, first-out

Questions about first in first out

What does first in first out mean?
First in first out means a method of inventory accounting that values items withdrawn from inventory at the cost of the oldest item assumed to remain in inventory.
What part of speech is first in first out?
First in first out is a noun.

Words near first in first out in the dictionary

  1. First Husbands
  2. first imperative
  3. first imperatives
  4. first impression
  5. first impressions
  6. first in first out
  7. first in, best dressed
  8. first in, first out
  9. First Intermediate Period
  10. first inversion
  11. first inversions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first in first out (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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