Word.ws English Dictionary

getting to first base

getting to first base is the present participle and gerund of get to first base.

Meaning of get to first base

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.

Questions about getting to first base

What is getting to first base the present participle and gerund of?
Getting to first base is the present participle and gerund of get to first base.

Words near getting to first base in the dictionary

  1. getting there
  2. getting through
  3. getting through one's head
  4. getting through one's thick skull
  5. getting to
  6. getting to first base
  7. getting to grips with
  8. getting to know
  9. getting to one's feet
  10. getting to the bottom of
  11. getting to the fireworks factory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: getting to first base (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “getting to first base.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/getting_to_first_base. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.