double first
- noun
- /ˈdʌb.əl fɜːst/
- Jargon
:
doble primera
- After years of hard work, he finally earned a double first in engineering.
Examples
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You earned a double first in mathematics.
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She graduated with a double first in history and philosophy from Cambridge.
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Graduated Canterbury University in 1993 with a double first in politics and sociology.
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He was a talented, ascetic character who had taken a Double First at Oxford and won a Soccer Blue, and who had then deliberately rejected worldly success by working for ten years as an ostensibly lowly junior Classics master at Shrewsbury School, where he himself had been as a boy.
Fiction book (1999) -
Receiving a double first at Oxford is a remarkable achievement for any student.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a first-class honours degree in two subjects' is directly compositional from 'double' (twofold) + 'first' (a top-class degree), so the overall sense is predictable from the constituents. While the term is regionally specific to British university grading, its literal two‑plus‑first structure makes it accessible to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
The noun double first comes from university exams: a first is the highest degree result, and when a student earned a first in two separate subjects or exam parts they were said to have a double first. So today double first means 'the top result in two subjects'.
