at the outset

at the outset

At the beginning. Honestly, I never expected this play to be so successful at the outset. At the outset, we had a much smaller budget for our renovations.
See also: outset
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

at the outset

Fig. at the very beginning. At the outset, we were told everything we had to do. I learned at the outset of the project that I was to lead it.
See also: outset
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

at the outset

Also, from the outset. At the start, from the start. For example, He wanted to explain his position from the outset, but there wasn't time, or At the outset the problem seemed simple, but then it became quite complicated. The noun outset is rarely heard today except in these phrases. [Mid-1700s]
See also: outset
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

at/from the ˈoutset (of something)

at/from the beginning of something: I made it clear right from the outset that I disapproved.
See also: outset
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • at/from the outset
  • outset
  • from the outset
  • in the first place
  • to start with
  • to begin with
  • out of the chute
  • off to a flying start
  • flying start
  • a flying start
References in classic literature
returning to his letter, she was disappointed at the outset.
I Say No
It was some relief to me to discover this Note, and to be satisfied at the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in every particular, fully and truly given.
Law and the Lady
Whatever help you can give me at the outset in blindfolding that woman's sharp eyes will be the most precious help I have ever received at your hands.
No Name
My cousin and I were separated at the outset. I never saw him when we forded the river; when we planted the English flag in the first breach; when we crossed the ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the town.
The Moonstone
Several general characteristics of Elizabethan literature and writers should be indicated at the outset. 1.
The allegory, at the outset, even in Spenser's own statement, is confused and hazy.
Spenser strangely planned to narrate this beginning of the whole in his final Book, but even if it had been properly placed at the outset it would have served only as a loose enveloping action for a series of stories essentially as distinct as those in Malory.
A History of English Literature
But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse --our first point of departure --must be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard.
Moby Dick I LXVII
The low levels of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are against them except at the outset of the disease.
Actions and Reactions
At the outset, in order not to give the balloon too ponderous dimensions, he had decided to fill it with hydrogen gas, which is fourteen and a half times lighter than common air.
Five Weeks in a Balloon
The number of which this branch of the legislature is to consist, at the outset of the government, will be sixtyfive.
Federalist Papers Authored by James Madison
But I am pretty sure that I began right, and that if I had always kept the lofty level which I struck at the outset I should have the right to use authority in these reminiscences without a bad conscience.
My Literary Passions
No one was astonished, then, that the head of the Surete had, at the outset of the mystery of The Yellow Room, telegraphed his precious subordinate to London, where he had been sent on a big case of stolen securities, to return with all haste.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
Walking in punctuated stop-start rhythms, the colored tops of their black body tights gleaming in a darkened light, they could be marking the some trajectories that they flew across at the outset of the work--as if Childs had slowed the `film' and shown it frame by frame.
From the White Edge of Phrygia
"Such programs as the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration also contained some risk at the outset," he says.
Government-backed 6% home mortgages?