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What is "first-class"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
first-class
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a first-class/second-class/third-class degree (=the level at which you pass a degree at a British university)
▪ She was awarded a first-class degree.
first-class compartment
▪ a first-class compartment
first-class post
▪ The package arrived by first-class post.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
compartment
▪ He found an empty first-class compartment, and she reached it by way of the corridor after the train had pulled out.
▪ He boarded the train for the overnight journey and entered a first-class compartment with his first-class ticket.
▪ He always sat at the end of the second coach, in the small, first-class compartment with red plush seats.
▪ As it was early afternoon there were no madding crowds, and she secured a first-class compartment to herself.
county
▪ But there was no question of any of the first-class counties being relegated for poor results.
▪ Perhaps, when the draw is made next season, the first-class counties will not be as lucky.
▪ Derbyshire is probably in the most parlous state of all the first-class counties.
cricket
▪ Chamberlain's practical experience of first-class cricket is slim, confined to six matches for Northamptonshire shortly after the war.
▪ Crawford retired from first-class cricket two years later, having scored over 7000 runs and taken more than 600 wickets in his career.
▪ In all first-class cricket, he scored 19,034 runs at 26.65 including 21 centuries, and took 1894 wickets at 25.05.
▪ Developers Foinavon have slapped in a £5m bid for first-class cricket ground Acklam Park in Middlesbrough.
▪ In all first-class cricket, Bradman averaged 95.14.
▪ It was the highest innings played in first-class cricket that summer.
▪ He also scored the fastest uncontrived century in first-class cricket, in a whirlwind 35 minutes at Northampton in 1920.
game
▪ A start could be made by limiting the service to one per point in the tie-break in the first-class game.
▪ Surridge retired from the first-class game in 1959 to concentrate on the family sports goods business.
▪ Hemmings has, in fact, played a first-class game in the West Indies.
honours
▪ He took the natural sciences tripos in 1877 with first-class honours, and was appointed an assistant demonstrator.
▪ When only eighteen he became a fellow of Exeter College in 1826, two years before obtaining first-class honours in classics.
▪ In 1927 he took first-class honours in his final examination.
▪ Five past pupils had this year obtained first-class Honours degrees, an achievement performed only once before, in 1950.
▪ In 1914 he graduated with first-class honours as an associate.
▪ Entering the University of Dundee, he graduated with first-class honours in history in 1975, and then pursued postgraduate study.
hotel
▪ One is that I often stay at a first-class hotel to merge into the background.
▪ Rema Hotel Concorde A first-class hotel conveniently located between the Königsallee and the main station.
▪ The railway company always intended to lease the Euston as a first-class hotel but tried at first to run the Victoria itself.
▪ Where to stay Berlin has a string of first-class hotels, and not a lot in the middling class.
mail
▪ Results of searches are normally dispatched by first-class mail the day they are received if the application is received by first post.
match
▪ In 1955 we played 34 first-class matches of which we won 27 and lost seven.
▪ Leonard Stuart Darling played in 100 first-class matches and scored 5780 runs at 42.50, with 16 centuries.
passenger
▪ On board were 142 first-class passengers and 100-odd - some of them very odd people travelling in economy.
▪ When the flight began, I busied myself handing out magazines to first-class passengers.
post
▪ I have sent thank-you cards to all my lucky stars by first-class post.
▪ It is best to return the form by first-class post.
▪ Always search by first-class post, not second.
▪ All orders will be acknowledged and all plants are despatched first-class post.
seat
▪ But getting suitable ones, to supplement the original first-class seats, has posed problems.
stamp
▪ For a catalogue, send two first-class stamps.
▪ Four first-class stamps usually cover the cost of mailing a book-rate package.
▪ Calls should cost about the same as a first-class stamp.
▪ Your calls should cost around the the price of a first-class stamp.
▪ Thus the price relative for first-class stamps is 100 × 14÷8.5 164.7, indicating an increase in price of 64.7%.
ticket
▪ Took the two first first-class tickets for C. Arms from this station numbered respectively 00 and 01.
▪ He boarded the train for the overnight journey and entered a first-class compartment with his first-class ticket.
▪ His second came at the ticket booth, where there was no-one for him to show his first-class ticket to.
▪ He protested his first-class ticket but they said he had to leave.
▪ She bought first-class tickets and still had half an hour to spare.
▪ Anyway, if he were simply trying to disappear, a first-class ticket on a standard commercial airline would have done.
▪ Senior Select Savings Plus provides solid discounts on shorter flights, and first-class tickets also can be purchased at a big discount.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a first-class package
▪ a first-class passenger
▪ Jaguar has always made first-class cars.
▪ She's doing a first-class job of running this company.
▪ The food at the restaurant is always first-class.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As he stuck a sceptical thumb into a tub of rock-hard Camembert, he knew he was facing a first-class mess.
▪ He boarded the train for the overnight journey and entered a first-class compartment with his first-class ticket.
▪ In 1955 we played 34 first-class matches of which we won 27 and lost seven.
▪ Last year the first-class letter service achieved record improvements in reliability.
▪ The nurses gave us a warm farewell before we left the hospital to board a first-class train to Tokyo.
▪ The pass gives one month of first-class travel in Britain.
▪ When the flight began, I busied myself handing out magazines to first-class passengers.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
First-class

First-class \First"-class`\, a. Of the best class; of the highest rank; in the first division; of the best quality; first-rate; as, a first-class telescope.

First-class car or First-class railway carriage, any passenger car of the highest regular class, and intended for passengers who pay the highest regular rate; -- distinguished from a second-class car.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
first-class

"of the highest class" with reference to some standard of excellence, 1837, from first (adj.) + class (n.). Specifically in reference to conveyances for travel, 1846. In reference to U.S. Mail, 1875.

WordNet
first-class

adj. of the highest quality; "made an excellent speech"; "the school has excellent teachers"; "a first-class mind" [syn: excellent, fantabulous]

first-class

adv. by first-class conveyance; with first-class accommodations; "we always travel first class"

Usage examples of "first-class".

As soon as the seat belt sign went off, a number of the aces ascended to the first-class lounge.

Only the stuffed quail and artichokes and asparagus and the really excellent champagne in the first-class galley went some little way toward reconciling Audubon to being stuck on the steamship an extra day.

He pushes through the first-class sections and spots Cordula and her mother in a full compartment.

To manufacture ammunition there were five hundredweight of lead in bars, fifty pounds of pewter to harden the balls to be used against heavy game, twenty thousand prepared lead musket balls, twenty kegs of first-class sporting gunpowder for the rifles and a hundred kegs of coarse black powder for the Brown Bess muskets, two thousand gunflints, greased patches to ensure a tight fit of the conical bullets in the rifle bore, fine cotton cloth to be cut into more patches, and a large keg of rendered hippopotamus fat to grease them.

Boat-buying was not his business, but a man named Si Hedges had telephoned him that he, Hedges, had obtained a number of first-class, small, war surplus steamships, and that he would re-sell them to Doc at a figure which would make him some money.

By the time I had disembarked from my first-class coach at Howrah Station, I had acknowledged the imperative of that great truth.

I was very much at peace with myself and the universe that evening as I watched the lights of Howrah Station through the window of my first-class coach.

I listen to Gavin, our Central Africa correspondent, giving us the story so far: According to the Congolese government in Kinshasa, a Rwandan-backed putsch has been nipped in the bud, thanks to a brilliantly executed security operation based on first-class intelligence.

Starting the next day, however, the very prisonlike prison described by Villamizar began to be transformed into a five-star hacienda with all kinds of luxuries, sports installations, and facilities for parties and pleasures, built with first-class materials brought in gradually in the false bottom of a supply van.

For every first-class psi like you, Hermine, there are about ninety-nine lesser psis, and about half of them are so negative as to perish soon, and many of the rest are mental cripples.

Patrolman-Tech First-Class Valkyr, out behind the station workshop, curses the portable plastic-formant rig.

First-Class Valkyr, out behind the station workshop, curses the portable plastic-formant rig.

Navy procurement had approved it, and it was accepted by Navy aviators and was flying in combat, 536 different alterations were necessary before it was first-class.

A few passengers came yawning and stretching out of the first-class compartments to stand in the corridor and assemble themselves ready for alighting.

A first-class journal does not really suffer because two or three formalists or two or three bigots among its thousands of subscribers give it up for six weeks in a pet of ill-temper--and then take it on again.