Language Overflow

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Martin Sleziak

11:07

It is from BBC website so I suppose it should be correct:

> League Two Grimsby Town reached the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time in 84 years as penalties either side of half-time stunned Premier League strugglers Southampton.

But my intuition would tell me to say that they reached the quarter-finals "for the first time" rather than just "for first time".

Are both commonly used - "for first time" and "for the first time"?

Q: Zero article with ordinal numbers

Recently I've seen several examples of phrases like 'awarded for first place' on Wikipedia etc. (E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ribbon) I think I understand when definite or indefinite articles are used with ordinal numbers, but what does a zero article mean before ordinals? Does it imp...

A: Zero article with ordinal numbers

Yes, it's quite correct. Numbers, not just ordinals, often remove the need for an article. For example, you could say "I have an apple", or "I have one apple". You could say "Astralbee is the best at answering English questions" or "is number one for answering English questions". There are plenty...