to begin with

1. 1.

   before now

   “why didn't you tell me in the first place?”

   Synonymsin the first placeearlierin the beginningoriginally

Questions about to begin with

What does to begin with mean?

to begin with means "before now".

What is another word for to begin with?

Close synonyms include in the first place, earlier, in the beginning, originally. 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 to begin with a common word?

to begin with 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.