Abstract
The word fi rst was very rare in Old English, which mostly used forma, fi rmest and
ærest in both spatial and temporal senses. All the three OE words became obsolescent
in the 14th century while fi rst, most likely supported by the fact that Old Norse
had a similarly shaped cognate word, increased its occurrence and range of senses
in early Middle English. By 1400 fi rst had become the usual word denoting the front
position and temporal antecedence both as an adjective and an adverb. Simultaneously
it outcompeted the equivalent words in the function of the ordinal number.
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