Word.ws English Dictionary

first things

first things is the plural of first thing.

Meaning of first thing

Noun

first thing (plural first things)

  1. The basic idea of how to do something.
    • I would help you, but I don't know the first thing about gardening.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see first, thing.
    • I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big...1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

See all 4 meanings of first thing

Questions about first things

What is first things the plural of?
First things is the plural of first thing.

Words near first things in the dictionary

  1. first success distribution
  2. first team
  3. first teams
  4. first thing
  5. first thing's first
  6. first things
  7. first things first
  8. first time
  9. first timed
  10. first times
  11. first timing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first things (page history and authors); first thing (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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