Primary
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˈpraɪməri/
- US enPR: prīʹmĕr-ē, IPA: /ˈpraɪmɛri/ or enPR: prīʹmə-rē, IPA: /ˈpraɪməri/
Origin
Borrowing from la prÄ«mÄrius, from prÄ«mus (“firstâ€; whence the English adjective prime) + -Ärius (whence the English suffix -ary); compare the French primaire, primer, and premier.
Full definition of primary
Adjective
primary
- The first in a group or series.Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.
- Bishop Pearsonthe church of Christ, in its primary institution
- John LockeThese I call original, or primary, qualities of body.
- Main; principal; placed ahead of others.Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock.
- (geology) Earliest formed; fundamental.
- (chemistry) Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement.
- (medicine) idiopathic
Derived terms
Noun
primary
(plural primaries)- A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party.
- The first year of grade school.
- A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible.
- The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system.
- A primary school.
- 2001, David Woods, Martyn Cribb, Effective LEAs and school improvementExcellence in Cities offers a further development of this approach, whereby secondary schools operate with small clusters of primaries as mini-EAZs.
- (ornithology) Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.
- A primary colour.
- 2003, Julie A Jacko, Andrew Sears, The human-computer interaction handbookBy adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced. These are called subtractive primaries.
- (electronics) A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary
Verb
- (US, intransitive) To take part in a primary election.
- (US, politics) To challenge an incumbent sitting politician for their political party's endorsement to run for re-election, through running a challenger campaign in a primary election