It Is Wrong To Say ‘First Come, First Serve’, Say This Instead

Do You Know It Is Wrong To Say ‘First Come, First Serve? Get it right in this post as we explain what you need to say.

English is a widely spoken language in the world. Most people do make mistakes while speaking the English language. Since no one is perfect, it will be best for us to know one common mistake people make while speaking the language.

It is quite wrong to say ‘First Come First Serve’. This is a common mistake that is used in queues. The correct statement should be “First Come, First Served“, Notice the “d” in “served”

It is a phrase which is meant, and continues to mean, that customers are served in chronological order; the person who arrived first, and has, thus been waiting the longest, will receive service first.

The phrasee can also be used to mean that the person who comes first will be the very first person to serve. This has taken on a more versatile meaning over time, however, and you can also use first come, first serve to say that:

The first person to lay claim to something deserves to have that thing. Therefore, if everything is gone, those who were left empty-handed should have arrived soon.

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The common phrase “first come, first serve” can be used in a variety of ways. These examples illustrate them:

• “Sorry, I can’t reserve those tickets for you. We have a first come, first serve policy here.”
• “Oops, I ate all the cake. First come, first serve, right?”
• “We’re a hot-desking company. Desks are first come, first serve.”
• “If you want to get the good stuff, you’ve got to arrive early. First come, first serve!”

The origins of the common phrase “first come, first serve” are not entirely clear. It is known that shopkeepers placed signs indicating “first come, first served”, “first come, first serve,” or simply “FCFS” in shop windows as early as the nineteenth century.

It is not known when the (grammatically more correct) “first come, first served”—as  in, “the first to come is the first to be”served”—almost universally transformed into “first come, first erved,”.

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As the wrong phrase has become the most common, it has also acquired other meanings. These are related to the value of arriving somewhere early and the ability to take more of something because nobody else was there.

Now that you know it is wrong to use this phrase, delete it from your oral and written English.