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Glite Dictionary
first floor

first floor

65 1.1
The floor at ground level in American English and the floor above the ground floor in British English
  • noun
  • /fɜrst flɔr/
translation icon : planta baja (US)
  • The office is located on the first floor of the building, making it easily accessible.
  • located on the first floor
  • rooms on the first floor
  • office on the first floor

So I ended up trying to punch a teacher out the first floor window.

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Examples

  • I was born there, on the first floor, while my mother was looking for a wedding ring.

    Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

  • Bravo team, we're on the first floor.

    Run Hide Fight (2021)

  • I live on the first floor.

    Attack the Block (2011)

  • We'll finish the first floor this summer.

    A Home of Our Own (1993)

  • Then we go to dinner, which leads us to the first floor, the dining room.

  • We have no AC in the first floor of the old side of the house.

  • We'll check the first floor and the basement.

    Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

  • Again, we're trapped inside the storage area somewhere on the first floor.

    Camel Spiders (2011)

  • Powers showed him into his own first-floor apartment, where he lived alone.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Fortunately, the outpatient wound center was already established in an easily accessible first-floor area of the main hospital.

    Academic text (2003)

How High

attic
179 1.5
upstairs
78 1.0
first floor
65 1.1
entresol
  • UK
9.9
ground floor
25 1.0
cellar
149 1.6

Surface Forms

first floor singular
first floors plural
first floors plural
first floor singular

Morphology

first + floor

The phrase is compositionally transparent: a B1 learner who knows 'first' and 'floor' can infer it refers to the floor numbered one. However, dialectal variation (US = ground level, UK = one above ground) and cross-linguistic differences about floor numbering create ambiguity about the exact physical level, so the referent is not fully predictable without exposure.

Etymology

The term first floor comes from how people count the levels in a building: in some places the street level is called the 'ground floor' and the level above it is the first floor, while in other places people start counting at the street and call that the first floor. So first floor can mean either the 'ground level' or the 'one floor up' depending on the country.