number one
number one adjective: first; foremost; best, often used after its headword.
Adjective
number one (not comparable)
- First; foremost; best, often used after its headword.
- Commuting to work is the number one reason to own a car.
- He is my enemy number one.
- Black, African-American.
Noun
number one (plural number ones)
- The most important person, the one who is in charge.
- Someone who is top of a ranking, who is ranked first.
- The phone rings, in the middle of the night / My father yells "what you gonna do with your life" / Oh, daddy, dear, you know you're still number one / But girls, they wanna have fun / Oh, girls just wanna have...1979, Robert Hazard, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, in She's So Unusual, performed by Cyndi Lauper, published 1983
- Djokovic came through 6-4 6-1 1-6 6-3 to end Nadal's reign as Wimbledon champion, before overtaking the Spaniard as world number one on Monday.2011 July 3, Piers Newbury, “Wimbledon 2011: Novak Djokovic beats Rafael Nadal in final”, in BBC Sport
- Oneself, being considered foremost, as by an egoist.
- No man should have more than two attachments—the first, to number one, and the second to the ladies; that's what I say—ha! ha!1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC
- Urine; urination.
- He might have got up, without the bell's sounding, to do his number one, or number two, in his great big white chamber-pot.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
- The single that has sold the most in a given period.
- The main goalkeeper of a team, so-called because they wear the number 1 on the back of their kit.
- England number one Hart produced a magnificent moment to deny Van Persie once more just after the hour mark, leaping across his goal to fingertip the Dutchman's crashing 25-yard, top corner-bound drive away.2011 January 5, Jonathan Stevenson, “Arsenal 0 - 0 Man City”, in BBC
- The batsman who opens the batting.
- A first lieutenant.
- A large town where theatrical performances may expect to achieve success.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see number, one.
Proper noun capitalized: Number One
Number One
- A locality in the MidCoast council area, eastern New South Wales, Australia.
number one meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Sanskrit
number one in Hindi
- urine or urination euphemism
- पेशाब peśāb, मूत mūt, मूत्र mūtra
number one in Tamil
- urine or urination euphemism
- ஒன்னுக்கு oṉṉukku
number one in Urdu
- خود, سب سے پہلا
number one in Sanskrit
- the number one
- कु ku
More languagesFewer languages
- number one in Vietnamese
- số một
Forms of number one
| plural | number ones |
|---|
Origin of number one
Piecewise doublet of numero uno.
Words formed from number one
- do number one
- go number one
- look out for number one
- number one with a bullet
- Christmas number one
Questions about number one
- What does number one mean?
- Number one means first; foremost; best, often used after its headword.
- What is number one in Hindi?
- Number one in Hindi is पेशाब (peśāb), मूत (mūt), मूत्र (mūtra). See Number one meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is number one?
- Number one can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
Words near number one in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: number one (page history and authors); Number One (page history and authors); number one (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); कु (Sanskrit) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-number one.ogg.
Cite this entry: “number one.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/number_one. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.