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Why do we say “First and foremost”?

Above all; before anything else.

The story

“Foremost” isn’t really “fore” plus “most.” In Old English it was “formest,” from “forma,” meaning first, plus the superlative “-est,” so it already meant first of all. Over time people heard “most” in the ending and spelled it that way. Pairing it with “first” says it twice, and Emily Brontë did just that in Wuthering Heights in 1847.

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