What does "first-come-first-served" mean?

Of a process or situation in which one is dealt with in the order in which ones arrives.

First-come-first-served

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Of a process or situation in which one is dealt with in the order in which ones arrives. not-comparable
"Effective March 30, 2006, the State of Virginia no longer follows their “first come, first served” policy regarding allocation of multiple child support orders."

Example

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"Effective March 30, 2006, the State of Virginia no longer follows their “first come, first served” policy regarding allocation of multiple child support orders."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.