first thing

1. not comparableEarly in the morning.

   I'll meet you first thing at the station.

2. not comparableStraight away, very soon.

   I'll do it first thing after school tomorrow.

   2009, Alex J. Packer, Bringing Up Parents: The Teenager's Handbook, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   Some of 'em said that when a boy had been away from home a couple of years he ought to want to see his folks the first thing.

   1916 March 11, Charles E. Van Loan, “His Folks”, in Saturday Evening Post

   You had to see it first thing, 'cause it was the first thing that caught the eye.

   2012, Cd Harper, And Face the Unknown: The Journey of a Lincoln-freed Colored, →ISBN

   Whatever it is, getting it out of the way is crucial to your forward momentum. So, to borrow a phrase from Nike, just do it—and do it first thing.

   2013, Nelson Searcy, Jennifer Dykes Henson, The Renegade Pastor: Abandoning Average in Your Life and Ministry, →ISBN, page 2013

plural first things

1. The basic idea of how to do something.

   I would help you, but I don't know the first thing about gardening.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see first, thing.

   1 more example

   I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC