From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishfirst and lastfirst and lastused to emphasize that something is the most important thing or quality She regarded herself as a teacher first and last, not a writer. → first
Examples from the Corpus
first and last• Instead of pressing the spacebar anywhere between the first and last characters of the text, press the Home spacebar.• These records included the first and last dates of all absences and the reason for absence.• At Banff I climbed my first and last mountain - Mount Rundle.• I sat back and treated myself to a cigarette, determined to make it the first and last of the day.• And a system whose first and last resort was all too often expediency.• For the first and last time in her life, Amelia was too preoccupied to interact with her peers.• It was the first and last time that management capitulated in the face of a departing mortgage trader.• She wrote that she was dying of a fever, and asked him to visit her for the first and last time. 