ground floor

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR ground floor ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

the floor of a building at or nearest to ground level.

Informal. an advantageous position or opportunity in a business matter, especially in a new enterprise: She took the job in the new company because she wanted to get in on the ground floor.

RELATED WORDS

preliminaries

Origin of ground floor

First recorded in 1595–1605

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for ground floor

Contemporary Examples of ground floor

Entering Morbid Anatomy from an unremarkable, industrial street in Brooklyn, its ground-floor coffee shop/bookstore is buzzing.
Brooklyn’s Museum of Death: Inside Morbid Anatomy’s House of Intriguing Horrors
Nina Strochlic
July 10, 2014
He had been renting his current place—a ground-floor apartment in a house on a hill—for the past four years.
In Sandy’s Wake, a New York Doorman Without a Home
Abigail Pesta
November 23, 2012

Historical Examples of ground floor

One of the ground-floor windows at the gable end of the house was open.
Casanova's Homecoming
Arthur Schnitzler
She opened the door of the ground-floor bedroom and looked in.
The Green Satin Gown
Laura E. Richards
In a good-sized room of the ground-floor Atlee found the prince awaiting him.
Lord Kilgobbin
Charles Lever
As he reached the marble hall on the ground-floor a lady was getting into the lift.
A Great Man
Arnold Bennett
And this fireplace was on the ground-floor, and not in Oxford Street.
A Great Man
Arnold Bennett

British Dictionary definitions for ground floor

ground floor

noun

the floor of a building level or almost level with the ground

get in on the ground floor or start from the ground floor informal

to enter a business, organization, etc, at the lowest level
to be in a project, undertaking, etc, from its inception

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for ground floor

also ground-floor, c.1600, from ground (n.) + floor (n.); figurative use is from 1864.