Foremost

She prankes not by hir mistresse side, she preases not to bée / The foremost of the companie, as when she erst was frée.

As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap.

Juan Diego hadn’t noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew.

1769, Oliver Goldsmith, The Roman History, London: S. Baker and G. Leigh et al., Volume 1, Chapter 16, p. 254, He was the best horseman, and the swiftest runner of his time. He was ever the foremost to engage, and the last to retreat;

a. 1891, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, in The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville, New York: Fawcett Premier, 1956, Chapter 17, p. 244, a bright young schoolmate of his whom he had seen struck by much the same startling impotence in the act of eagerly rising in the class to be foremost in response to a testing question put to it by the master

[…] of both them, she / (By Pallas counsell) was to haue the grace / Of foremost greeting.

The exhibition features works by the country’s foremost artists.

Foremost among the workers’ grievances was the company’s failure to address the many safety issues in the plant.