Primary

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈpraɪmÉ™ri/
• US enPR: prīʹmÄ•r-Ä“, IPA: /ˈpraɪmÉ›ri/ or enPR: prīʹmÉ™-rÄ“, IPA: /ˈpraɪmÉ™ri/

Origin

Borrowing from la prīmārius, from prīmus (“first”; whence the English adjective prime) + -ārius (whence the English suffix -ary); compare the French primaire, primer, and premier.

Full definition of primary

Adjective

1. 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.
2. Main; principal; placed ahead of others.Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock.
3. (geology) Earliest formed; fundamental.
4. (chemistry) Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement.
5. (medicine) idiopathic

Derived terms

• primarily
• primary care
• primary color, primary colour
• primary producer
• primary research
• primary school
• primary source

Noun

1. A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party.
2. The first year of grade school.
3. A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible.
4. The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system.
5. 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.
6. (ornithology) Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.
7. 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.
8. (electronics) A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary

Verb

1. (US, intransitive) To take part in a primary election.
2. (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