What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Ultimate vs First - What's the difference?

ultimate | first |

As nouns the difference between ultimate and first

is that ultimate is the most basic or fundamental of a set of things while first is ridge (of roof).

As an adjective ultimate

is final; last in a series.

ultimate

English

Adjective

(wikipedia ultimate) (-)
  • Final; last in a series.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year= 1677 , isbn= , date= , author= (Robert Plot) , title= The natural history of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=EUqd_M1x40QC&pg=PA15 , page= 15 , chapter= Of the Heavens and Air , passage= }}
  • (of a syllable) Last in a word or other utterance.
  • Being the greatest possible; maximum; most extreme.
  • the ultimate pleasure
    the ultimate disappointment
  • *
  • Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
  • Being the most distant or extreme; farthest.
  • That will happen at some time; eventual.
  • Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
  • * Coleridge
  • those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict
  • Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.
  • an ultimate constituent of matter

    Antonyms

    * proximate

    Derived terms

    * antepenultimate * penultimate * ultimateness

    Coordinate terms

    * (syllable adjectives)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The most basic or fundamental of a set of things
  • The final or most distant point; the conclusion
  • The greatest extremity; the maximum
  • (uncountable) The sport of ultimate frisbee.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    first

    English

    (wikipedia first)

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) (m), (m), (m), (m), from (etyl) (m), .

    Alternative forms

    * firste (archaic) * fyrst (obsolete) * fyrste (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Preceding all others of a series or kind; the ordinal of one; earliest.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2 , passage=Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines.}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Yesterday’s fuel , passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).}}
  • Most eminent or exalted; most excellent; chief; highest.
  • * 1784 : William Jones, The Description and Use of a New Portable Orrery, &c. , PREFACE
  • THE favourable reception the Orrery has met with from Per?ons of the fir?t di?tinction, and from Gentlemen and Ladies in general, has induced me to add to it ?everal new improvements in order to give it a degree of Perfection; and di?tingui?h it from others; which by Piracy, or Imitation, may be introduced to the Public.
    Alternative forms
    * ; (in names of monarchs and popes) I

    Adverb

    (-)
  • Before anything else; firstly.
  • * , chapter=8
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=That concertina was a wonder in its way. The handles that was on it first was wore out long ago, and he'd made new ones of braided rope yarn. And the bellows was patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls.}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=29, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Unspontaneous combustion , passage=Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia.}}

    Noun

  • (uncountable) The person or thing in the first position.
  • * 1699 , , Heads designed for an essay on conversations
  • Study gives strength to the mind; conversation, grace: the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness: one gives substance and form to the statue, the other polishes it.
  • (uncountable) The first gear of an engine.
  • (countable) Something that has never happened before; a new occurrence.
  • (countable, baseball) first base
  • (countable, British, colloquial) A first-class honours degree.
  • (countable, colloquial) A first-edition copy of some publication.
  • A fraction of an integer ending in one.
  • Derived terms

    * feet first * firstborn * first-class * first gear * first imperative (Latin grammar) * first of all * first place * first things first * first up

    See also

    * primary

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) (m), (m), (m), from (etyl) (m), (m), . See also (l).

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) Time; time granted; respite.
  • Statistics

    *