number one
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Piecewise doublet of numero uno.
Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Adjective
[edit]number one (not comparable)
- (idiomatic) First; foremost; best, often used after its headword.
- Commuting to work is the number one reason to own a car.
- He is my enemy number one.
- 2024 July 8, Lotte Knudsen, quotee, “Road crashes: a silent killer”, in Delegation of the European Union to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva[1], archived from the original on 2024-07-10:
- Road safety is a daily tragedy that doesn’t seem to make the front pages even though it’s a number one killer. In some countries, it causes more deaths than small firearms, and in others, more than illnesses.
- (US, law enforcement) Black, African-American.
Translations
[edit]first, foremost, best
Noun
[edit]number one (plural number ones)
- The most important person, the one who is in charge.
- Someone who is top of a ranking, who is ranked first.
- 1979, Robert Hazard (lyrics and music), “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, in She's So Unusual[2], performed by Cyndi Lauper, published 1983:
- The phone rings, in the middle of the night / My father yells "what you gonna do with your life" / Oh, daddy, dear, you know you're still number one / But girls, they wanna have fun / Oh, girls just wanna have...
- 2011 July 3, Piers Newbury, “Wimbledon 2011: Novak Djokovic beats Rafael Nadal in final”, in BBC Sport[3]:
- Djokovic came through 6-4 6-1 1-6 6-3 to end Nadal's reign as Wimbledon champion, before overtaking the Spaniard as world number one on Monday.
- Oneself, being considered foremost, as by an egoist.
- 1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:
- No man should have more than two attachments—the first, to number one, and the second to the ladies; that's what I say—ha! ha!
- (childish, euphemistic) Urine; urination.
- 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:
- He might have got up, without the bell's sounding, to do his number one, or number two, in his great big white chamber-pot.
- (music) The single that has sold the most in a given period.
- (soccer) The main goalkeeper of a team, so-called because they wear the number 1 on the back of their kit.
- 2011 January 5, Jonathan Stevenson, “Arsenal 0 - 0 Man City”, in BBC[4]:
- England number one Hart produced a magnificent moment to deny Van Persie once more just after the hour mark, leaping across his goal to fingertip the Dutchman's crashing 25-yard, top corner-bound drive away.
- (cricket) The batsman who opens the batting.
- A first lieutenant.
- (theater) A large town where theatrical performances may expect to achieve success.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see number, one.
Coordinate terms
[edit]- number two (especially regarding the urination sense), number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven, number eight, number nine, number ten, and so on
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]someone who is in charge
top-ranking person
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urine or urination euphemism
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked: "the most important person or thing"
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Categories:
- English piecewise doublets
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English multiword terms
- English idioms
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- American English
- en:Law enforcement
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English childish terms
- English euphemisms
- en:Music
- en:Football (soccer)
- en:Cricket
- en:Theater
- en:One
- en:People