in the first place vs preeminently

in the first place

prep
  • at all, even (typically in non-negated statements) 

  • to begin with; earlier; firstly; originally; at the start, 

preeminently

adv
  • In a preeminent manner. 

How often have the words in the first place and preeminently occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )