first and last

1. 1.

   taking everything together

   “she was first and last a scientist”

   Synonymsabove all

Questions about first and last

What does first and last mean?

first and last means "taking everything together".

What is another word for first and last?

Close synonyms include above all. 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 first and last a common word?

first and last is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.