foremost
/ˈfɔː.məʊst/adjective, adverb
foremost is spelled F-O-R-E-M-O-S-T. The wrong spelling people search most is formost: about 1,160 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 12 of all searches for the word. Foremost is an adjective meaning “Positioned in front of (all) others in space, most forward”.
How many letters and syllables are in foremost?
| Letters | 8: F-O-R-E-M-O-S-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 6.0 times per million words; the 9,878th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, formost, about 1,160 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell foremost?
Foremost is spelled F-O-R-E-M-O-S-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 12 of the searches for foremost in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is foremost?
Foremost appears 6.0 times per million words in written English, the 9,878th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce foremost?
- UK /ˈfɔː.məʊst/
Foremost has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-foremost.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What does foremost mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Positioned in front of (all) others in space, most forward.
- 2
Coming before (all) others in time.
- 3
Of the highest rank or position; of the greatest importance; of the highest priority.
The exhibition features works by the country’s foremost artists.
- 4
Closest to the bow.
adverb
- 1
In front, prominently forward.
- 2
First in time.
- 3
Most importantly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does foremost come from?
From Old English formest, fyrmest (“earliest, first, most prominent”), from Proto-Germanic *frumistaz, from the locative stem *fur-, *fr- + the superlative suffix *-umistaz, stem ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pr-. The suffix *-umistaz was a compound suffix, created from the rarer comparative suffix *-umô (as in Old English fruma) + the regular superlative suffix *-istaz (English -est); *-umô in turn is from Proto-Indo-European *-mHo-.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).