How to use firstly in a sentence
26 example sentences · adverb
Firstly means in the first place; before anything else; first. Example: “Firstly, that's illegal; secondly, it has serious disadvantages; thirdly, it's not necessary; and lastly, did I mention that it's illegal?”
Examples of firstly by meaning
adverbIn the first place; before anything else; first.
- We'll go into more depth with all the specs shortly so anyone less well versed in espresso speak will understand what I'm harping on about, but firstly let's just talk about using the machine.2025 May 3, Kev, “Rocket Appartamento TCA Review”, in Coffee Blog
More sentences with firstly
- Firstly, that's illegal; secondly, it has serious disadvantages; thirdly, it's not necessary; and lastly, did I mention that it's illegal?From the entry lastly
- Firstly, bandwidth estimation requires sending extra burst packets that brings a considerable overhead into the system.2004, Cevdet Aykanat, Tugrul Dayar, Ibrahim Korpeoglu, Computer and Information Sciences - ISCIS 2004: 19th International Symposium, page…. From the entry streamer
- Firstly, I continue to base most species treatments on personally collected material, rather than on herbarium plants.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.…. From the entry species
- Firstly because a Merlin datacomms system is designed with growth in mind.1986, The Director, volume 39, number 6. From the entry datacomms
- Firstly, the "response" you printed was never approved of by the general membership of GAA.1979 December 8, R. Paul Martin, “Curiouser And Curiouser”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 20, page 5. From the entry co-opter
- Firstly there was the desire to add colour, mystical fervour, to the restrained, matter-of-fact Roman rite.1926, J[ames] M[idgley] Clark, “The Drama”, in The Abbey of St Gall as a Centre of Literature & Art, Cambridge: At the University Press…. From the entry trope
- Firstly, there is no magic money tree.2022 October 19, Christian Wolmar, “HS2 must reach Birmingham... but what happens then?”, in RAIL, number 968, page 38. From the entry magic money tree
- Firstly, French monopolies over logistics and utilities are explicit.2017 April, Cameron D. Pickett, “Discussion”, in French Political Economic Interests in Francophone Africa […] (Senior Honors Projects…. From the entry Côte d'Ivoiran
- This approach was firstly used in a metagenomic context to study the microbial community associated with the gutless worm Olavius algarvensis.2015 November 16, Lanjuan Li, Infectious Microecology: Theory and Applications, Springer, →ISBN, page 213. From the entry gutless
- Firstly, the writer, like the language, is subject to the situation, in that he or she must say something meanable.2009, Bill Ashcroft, Caliban's Voice. From the entry meanable
- Firstly, the issue didn't seem to be Jewishness but Wiccanness.2002 November 23, Aqua, “Re: Out to the Shrink!”, in alt.polyamory (Usenet), message-ID <3ddede8b@duster.adelaide.on.net>. From the entry Wiccanness
- Firstly, a set of waterly elements which may not be able to assimilate to a simple thickness line.1981, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, Technical papers of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping. From the entry waterly
- Firstly we will take Massingham's views on giantlore and then compare these with Forbes's, who was a similarly enlightened antiquary.1974, Paul Screeton, Quicksilver heritage: the mystic leys: their legacy of ancient wisdom. From the entry giantlore
- Firstly, you must not expect too much from this science, for you cannot set contrary brains to rights by any logic.1906, Joseph Dietzgen, Eugene Dietzgen, The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, page 182. From the entry wordmongery
- As you may have noticed, we've followed a few naming conventions; firstly, the PSR-1 standard declares that class names must be declared in StudlyCaps.2016, Junade Ali, Mastering PHP Design Patterns, page 25. From the entry StudlyCaps
- Firstly, the proper accentuation is uncertain.2015, Lars Nordgren, “αἰαῖ—aiai”, in Greek Interjections: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs…. From the entry perispomene
- The inspiratory-off switch (IOS) system consists of discharges arising from firstly, the pulmonary stretch receptors through the Breuer-Hering reflex and secondly the pneumotaxic pattern generator.2013, Robert Fitzgerald, The Regulation of Respiration During Sleep and Anesthesia, →ISBN, page 6. From the entry pneumotaxic
- Firstly you have an external problem: somehow those hateful bunnies wtfpwn in the story world, denying you your place in the sun.2011, Julian Hoxter, Write What You Don't Know: An Accessible Manual for Screenwriters, →ISBN. From the entry wtfpwn
- Firstly, at that time MBT said that it was built because they based on projection of demands and not based on the build-to-order process.2010 May 6, soc.culture.singapore (Usenet). From the entry build-to-order
- For, firstly, the membership of these societies is limited; arid "toothly," as the colored preacher said, one blackball will keep out any one.1907, The Bay State monthly. From the entry toothly
- The universal snap curve, which describes the critical boundary conditions of the pinned-clamped elasticas, is firstly obtained by determining the saddle-node bifurcation points of the moment-rotation response curves.2020 December, Qiang Wang, Hai-Lin Zou, Zi-Chen Deng, “Snap-through of a pinned-clamped elastica with arbitrarily movable support at the…. From the entry elastica
- Firstly, as Marx asserts, for a commodity to have an exchange-value, it must first have a use-value – that is, there must be a social need for the commodity.2019, Adam Booth, Rob Sewell, Understanding Marx’s Capital: A reader’s guide, Wellred Books, page 84. From the entry mud pie argument
- Firstly, there needs to be an overarching plan - in the sense that each part of the rail system must be considered together, precisely because it is an integrated network.2020 May 20, David Thrower, Ian Wray, “Revisiting the plan for developing the North's rail network”, in RAIL, page 39. From the entry overarching
- Wanwiphand found that, firstly, Red Shirts were more likely to have lower socio-economic status than Yellow Shirts, and were also more likely to work in the agricultural or informal sectors.2016, Citizenship and Democratization in Southeast Asia, →ISBN, page 292. From the entry yellow shirt
- Firstly, it is a fact of academic observation, as I mentioned earlier, that the descriptions which linguists provide for utterances are disputable, and disputed, what one might call undecidably so.1974, Foundations of Language, volume 11, page 92. From the entry undecidably
Meaning of firstly
- adverb In the first place; before anything else; first.
Questions about firstly in a sentence
- How do you use firstly in a sentence?
- Firstly is used as an adverb. For example: “Firstly, that's illegal; secondly, it has serious disadvantages; thirdly, it's not necessary; and lastly, did I mention that it's illegal?”
- What is a short sentence with firstly?
- “Firstly, the proper accentuation is uncertain.”
- What does firstly mean?
- Firstly means in the first place; before anything else; first.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: firstly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use firstly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/firstly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
