Word.ws English Dictionary

get to first base

get to first base verb: to get as far as the first phase or milestone of a goal.

Verb

get to first base (third-person singular simple present gets to first base, present participle getting to first base, simple past got to first base, past participle (UK) got to first base or (US) gotten to first base)

  1. (idiomatic) To get as far as the first phase or milestone of a goal.
    • We are not just people who "happen to be queer" — we are a terribly oppressed minority who will never get to first base in our battle for human and constitutional rights until we stop pretending that we are "like everyone else" and start fighting for our uniqueness.1979 April 28, J. Lee, “I'm Still Here”, in Gay Community News, page 5
  2. (euphemistic, idiomatic, slang) To get as far as kissing in sexual advances.

Forms of get to first base

third-person singular presentgets to first base
present participlegetting to first base
pastgot to first base
past participle UKgot to first base
past participle USgotten to first base

Questions about get to first base

What does get to first base mean?
Get to first base means to get as far as the first phase or milestone of a goal.
What part of speech is get to first base?
Get to first base is a verb.
What is the past tense of get to first base?
The past tense of get to first base is got to first base.

Words near get to first base in the dictionary

  1. get this
  2. get through
  3. get through one's head
  4. get through one's thick skull
  5. get to
  6. get to first base
  7. get to fuck
  8. get to grass
  9. get to grips with
  10. get to know
  11. get to one's feet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get to first base (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-get to first base.ogg.

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