number ones

Noun

number one (plural number ones)

1. The most important person, the one who is in charge.
2. 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
3. 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
4. (childish, euphemistic) 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
5. The single that has sold the most in a given period.
6. 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

See all 13 meanings of number one