first papers

American  

plural noun

Informal.

1. an official declaration of intention filed by a resident alien desiring to become a U.S. citizen: not required by law after 1952.

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Etymology

Origin of first papers

An Americanism dating back to 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

first papers

Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, has known Summers since graduate school and coauthored one of the first papers Summers published in an academic journal.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

In 2006 and 2007, evolutionary geneticist David Begun at the University of California, Davis, published what many regard as the first papers to make the case for particular genes arising de novo in fruit flies3,4.

From Nature ● Oct. 15, 2019

Ankita Patnaik, an economist at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington DC, authored one of the first papers studying QPIP.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 15, 2018

And yet as Stephen Collins, a gastroenterologist at McMaster University, told me, those first papers contained the seeds of an entire new field of research.

From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2015

It was handicapped by a "rider" which required full naturalization by every foreign-born man before he could vote, instead of merely his first papers as now.

From The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI by Ida Husted Harper