Foremost

Foremost can be both an adverb and an adjective. It has developed in an interesting way.

• It is now seen as being fore (or in the front of), followed by the adverb most, meaning 'in the greatest degree'.
• Its origin was rather as
  • formon-, the superlative of the Teutonic adjective which gave us fore, 'at an earlier time'. So formon- meant 'at the earliest time, or 'first'.
  • This was metanalysed as a positive adjective 'forme-', which was then given the regular English superlative ending '-est'. So the later form in English of Foremost represents an erroneous double superlative of 'foremo[n-e]st', ~ 'the most first', or 'the most beforest'.

The current meaning of foremost is less in terms of time than in terms of rank or importance: the adjective as "Most notable or prominent, best, chief", and the adverb as "First, before any other or anything else, in position or rank" (OED, which also points out the frequency in both word classes of the stronger doublet pairing of first and foremost]].)