First dibs is the right to choose or take something before anyone else, claimed by calling the word out. The expression is American and was in print by the early 1900s. The word ‘dibs’ behind it is older and English, and probably comes from the children’s game of dibstones.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘First dibs’?
Of course, in establishing the source of ‘first dibs’ it’s the ‘dibs’ part that requires explaining. The OED lists many meanings of the word dib:
- A small hollow in the ground or a puddle - known since the 1840s.
- A game played by children (also called dibbs, or dibstones) with pebbles or the knucklebones of sheep; also the name of the play pieces - known since the late 17th century.
- A children’s word to make first claim on something - known since 1907.
- A counter used in card games as a substitute for money.
- A slang term for money - known since 1808.
- A pointed gardening tool used for making holes for seeds (also called a dibber) - known since 1891.
We can’t now be sure which of these, or indeed another meaning of ‘dib’ was the source of ‘first dibs’ but the ‘children’s claim made on something’ has to be a strong contender. It also seems likely that the game dibs, a.k.a. dibstones, which involves the claiming of the dibstones by calling out ‘dibs’ is how ‘first dibs’ originated.
Where ‘dib’ itself came from is not settled. Etymonline treats the children’s claim-word as ‘probably a contraction of dibstone’, and dates that game piece to the 1690s. Green’s Dictionary of Slang takes a different route for the noun ‘dib’ meaning a share, which it explains as ‘a corruption of SE division or divide’. Etymonline hedges its version with ‘probably’; Green’s states its own without qualification.
Dibstones is known to have been played since 1693 as it was recorded in the English philosopher John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which was published that year:
I have seen little Girls exercise whole Hours together and take abundance of Pains to be expert at Dibstones as they call it.
‘Dibs’, in the form of ‘dibbs’ or ‘dibstones’, originated in England but all of the early citations of ‘first dibs’ are from the USA. In fact, ‘first dibs’ isn’t an expression that is often used in the UK, where children are more likely to claim things by ‘bagging’ them - as in ‘bags I go first on the swings’.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang marks ‘bags I!’ as British and juvenile and takes it back to 1887, quoting the novel Poor Nellie: “slang or not slang, bags I Nellie!”
It is entirely plausible that the ‘claim’ meaning of ‘dibs’ travelled to the USA from England as people migrated there. Any child who called out ‘dibs’ when playing dibstones would surely continue to do so whether on Olde England or New England.
‘First dibs’ was certainly in use in the USA by the early 1900s. The Wisconsin Home and Farm School Association was a charitable group that aimed provide housing and education for homeless boys. In 1907 they published a pamphlet called Our Boys, which includes these text:
When a morsel is left
In a cooking dish,
This short little sentence
will voice a boy’s wish.Each boy cries out
As quick as he can.
”I got first dibs
On the baking pan.”
This example of ‘first dibs’ suggest that the expression was well-known to street children in Wisconsin in 1907.
That pamphlet is earlier than the first example in either Green’s Dictionary of Slang or Etymonline. Green’s defines ‘first dibs’ as ‘first choice, first turn to pick’, marks it as originally American, and gives as its earliest citation a 1943 headline in Prairie Farmer: “Government Has First Dibs on Commercial Pack”. Etymonline dates the bare claim-word ‘dibs’ to 1915, also American. For the shout on its own, the earliest example in Green’s is from 1932, in L. W. Merryweather’s “Argot of an Orphans’ Home” in American Speech: “Dibs on that magazine when you’re through.” Green’s also records the answering shout that refused a claim: ‘fen dibs’.
We spend less time in fields now than before and during the 20th century the term was further extended to include opportunity as well as enjoyment; for example, ‘Clergyman found drunk in nightclub - the tabloids will have a first dibs with that’.
Current dictionaries still mark the expression as American. The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary labels ‘dibs’ mainly US informal and defines ‘dibs on something’ as ‘a right to have or get something from someone, or to use something’. An online marketplace for design, 1stDibs, has since taken the name.