ab initio

1. 1.

   at the beginning

   “at first he didn't notice anything strange”

   Synonymsinitially

Questions about ab initio

What does ab initio mean?

ab initio means "at the beginning".

What is another word for ab initio?

Close synonyms include initially. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ab initio a common word?

ab initio is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.