first / firstly

First and firstly

Examples:

a) A baby learns how to crawl first before it attempts to walk.

b) A baby goes through three procedures before it learns to walk. Firstly, it learns to crawl; secondly, it learns to hold on to something firm to stand upright; thirdly it learns to stand upright without support, and lastly

you said "first doesn't give a verb after itself" ?

an explamle.

"firstly, enter the button, then you will be surpised"

in this sentense, can first use instead of firstly without moving any object"

To hiperaktif,

Re: "First learn" and "firstly, learn".

Examples:

a) First learn how to pronounce the alphabets individually and then learn how to pronounce them together with a vowel.

b) To learn pronunciation you'll have to follow these steps. Firstly, learn to pronounce the alphabets individually; seco

Maybe this is a British/American distinction, but I'm not sure I've ever said "firstly" in my life! My dictionary does list "firstly," but it says it is equivalent to "first" in its adverbial usage. So I would say that at least in the U.S., you can forget about "firstly" and just use "first" as either an adjective or adverb.

Moderators - am I off base here?

.....but I'm not sure I've ever said "firstly" in my life!

I am not surprised at all. I have never heard of "ball park estimates" in my life, yet today this "chic" expression was on an advert by an English Teaching Institute on Hong Kong TV.

..... off base

I wonder if Americans realise that "al-Qa

The word "firstly" seems to be coined by stylish parallelism. The Oxford English Dictionary says about this word as:

firstly, adv.

In the first place, before anything else, first. Used only in enumerating heads, topics, etc. in discourse; and many writers prefer first, even thou

First and firstly are basically the same. You can use both for lists, and either where the other can go (except first place, and in the first place, etc- places where it is obvious that it has to be first). Many writers prefer using "first" though because the word "firstly" is a really old english word. The only thing with first and firstly is you HAVE to keep it parallel. If yo

KhoffMaybe this is a British/American distinction, but I'm not sure I've ever said "firstly" in my life! My dictionary does list "firstly," but it says it is equivalent to "first" in its adverbial usage. So I would say that at least in the U.S., you can forget about "firstly" and just use "first" as either an adjective or adverb.

Moderators - am I off base here

Do you both realize this post was last added to well over two years ago?

Anyway, I agree that it's extremely rarely used in the U.S. I don't think I've ever used it in, and I've very rarely read it in U.S.-produced content.

Are "firstly", "secondly", "lastly" obsolete, and replaced now by first, second, last?