first cause

1. 1.

   an agent that is the cause of all things but does not itself have a cause

   “God is the first cause”

   Synonymsprime moverprimum mobile

   Broadercausal agent

Questions about first cause

What does first cause mean?

first cause means "an agent that is the cause of all things but does not itself have a cause".

What is another word for first cause?

Close synonyms include prime mover, primum mobile. 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 cause a common word?

first cause 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.