primary

Borrowed from Latin prīmārius (“of the first (rank); chief, principal; excellent”), from prīmus (first; whence the English adjective prime) + -ārius (whence the English suffix -ary); compare the French primaire, primer, and premier.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɹaɪməɹi/
• (US) enPR: prīʹmĕr-ē, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹi/ or enPR: prīʹmə-rē, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹaɪməɹi/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɒeməɹi/, /ˈpɹɒemɹi/

• Audio (US)

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primary (comparative more primary, superlative most primary)

1. The first in a group or series.

   Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.

   • Bishop Pearson

     the church of Christ, in its primary institution

   • John Locke

     These 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) Relating to the place where a disorder or disease started to occur.
6. (medicine) Relating to day-to-day care provided by health professionals such as nurses, general practitioners, dentists etc.

• first
• primus inter pares

primary (plural primaries)

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, such as a planet in relation to its satellites.
5. A primary school.
   • 2001, David Woods, Martyn Cribb, Effective LEAs and school improvement

     Excellence 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 handbook

     By adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced. These are called subtractive primaries.

8. (medicine) Primary site of disease; original location or source of the disease.

   unknown primary

   most common primaries

9. (electronics) A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary

• primary on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

primary (third-person singular simple present primaries, present participle primarying, simple past and past participle primaried)

1. (US, transitive) To knock out an incumbent in the primary election, typically used referring to a non-incumbent challenger.
2. (US, intransitive) To take part in a primary election.
3. (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

• primary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• primary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.