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Glite Dictionary
first birthday

first birthday

16 1.0
A party to celebrate a child's first year
  • noun
: primer cumpleaños
  • At the baby's first birthday party, she sat beside it, fed it cake, and smiled at the camera.

I think back to my first birthday in Los Angeles.

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Examples

  • And for David's first birthday party, Beau brought a girl.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • In Denver, he spent his first birthday away from home.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • That was my first birthday party.

    The Devil Inside (2012)

  • Her first birthday away from home.

    Bloom (2003)

  • I think back to my first birthday in Los Angeles.

    Theo Von

  • I love the style and color, and my daughter wore it for her first birthday photo.

    Blog text (26)

  • Adam's parents began teaching him a gesture before his first birthday.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Because as you saw in yesterday's video, it was Nola and Buzz's first birthday yesterday.

  • When Hoops celebrated his first birthday, he amused his family by saying, "Mama," "Dada," and "double dribble."

    Fiction book (1998)

  • We decorated the house with balloons and cake for the baby's first birthday celebration.

How Big

party
∞ 1.0
first birthday
16 1.0
in private
249 2.4

Surface Forms

first birthday singular
first birthdays plural

Morphology

first + birthday

The meaning 'the celebration marking a child's first year (turning one)' is directly and transparently derivable from combining 'first' (ordinal) with 'birthday' (annual celebration). This ordinal+noun composition follows regular English patterns and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand the MWE.

Etymology

The phrase first birthday is literal: first means the first year and birthday is the yearly day you were born. Families often give a cake and a party to mark this first year, so it refers to 'the celebration marking a child's first year of life'.