‘To begin with’ is most often used to introduce the first of a list of points, especially when more are coming. Someone listing complaints or reasons might say the job was badly paid to begin with, before going on to add other grievances. It can also stand alone, meaning simply “at the outset” or “originally”, describing how something was at the very start before it changed. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as meaning “at the outset, as the first thing to be considered”, and notes that it once had an obsolete variant, “withal”.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘to begin with’?
The phrase has been in English for a very long time. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation for it in this modern form comes from before 1563, in John Bale’s play King Johan: “Fyrst to begyne with, we shall interdyte the lond.”
The OED also places the phrase in a wider grammatical pattern. It notes that “to begin with” is structurally parallel to older constructions such as “to begin at” and “to begin from”, both of which were normally followed by an object of some kind, such as a place, a time or a subject. “To begin with” would originally have worked the same way, introducing whatever the speaker was starting from or with. Over time this pattern wore down into the fixed, object-less phrase used today, where “with” no longer needs anything to follow it and the whole expression functions as a kind of adverbial tag meaning “at the start” or “in the first place”.
This kind of shift, from a preposition governing a specific object to a preposition doing the work of a whole phrase, is common enough in English idiom, but in this case it has left a very old and stable expression. The sense recorded in Bale’s play in the sixteenth century, of naming the first thing to be considered before others follow, is essentially the same sense in use now, whether someone is beginning a list of reasons or simply describing how a thing was at its outset.