Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
first reading

first reading

3 6.2
Members of parliament read a bill for the first time before full debate
  • noun
  • Formal
translation icon : primera lectura
  • The council will discuss the new tax policy during the first reading next week.

Examples

  • I have just given the first reading to Alil Abunimah's book "One Country."

    Blog text (2)

  • You may ignore this at first reading but may want to come back to it at some stage.

    Blog text (1)

  • I really want to guide them to find evidence from the text, so I decided that I would do the first reading.

    Academic text (2012)

  • Our data analysis began after the first reading of the first candidate report and continued until we had read all the reports.

    Academic text (2006)

  • Bill C-54, the Protection of Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act, was tabled in Parliament and received first reading on October 1, 1998.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Signed in June 2013, the services deal was headed for ratification by the Legislative Yuan, the nation's unicameral legislature, until a KMT lawmaker suddenly announced in mid-March the completion of the first reading of the deal, one of the initial steps in the enactment process.

    Academic text (2015)

  • After the first reading, the committee will analyze the proposed legislation in detail.

  • The first reading of the bill was met with enthusiastic support from the members.

How Advanced

assent
  • Formal
12 6.8
second reading
  • Formal
2 7.7
first reading
  • Formal
3 6.2
introduction
81 2.1

Surface Forms

first reading singular
first readings plural

Morphology

first + reading

The components 'first' + 'reading' transparently yield the idea of 'the first time something is read', so a learner could plausibly infer it refers to an initial presentation. However, the specific procedural/legal sense — a formal stage in parliamentary consideration of a bill — is domain-specific and not automatically clear from the everyday sense of 'reading' without extra exposure. Because the connection is partly compositional but requires some institutional knowledge (though many languages use an equivalent term), this is best classed as semi-transparent.

Etymology

First reading comes from the old practice of reading a new bill out loud to a group of lawmakers for the first time. That first reading was just an 'introduction', so today 'first reading' means the bill is officially 'presented' but not yet fully examined or 'debated'.