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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

primary.

First or earliest in a group or series.

7 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈpɹaɪ.m(ə.)ɹi/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹ.i/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹaɪ.mə.ɹi/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹɑe.m(ə.)ɹiː/Australia
  1. First or earliest in a group or series.

    Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.
  2. Main; principal; chief; placed ahead of others.

  3. Earliest formed; fundamental.

    Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock.
  4. Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement.

  5. Relating to the place where a disorder or disease started to occur.

  6. Relating to day-to-day care provided by health professionals such as nurses, general practitioners, dentists etc.

Where this word comes from

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. Doublet of premier.

noun/ˈpɹaɪ.m(ə.)ɹi/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹ.i/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹaɪ.mə.ɹi/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹɑe.m(ə.)ɹiː/Australia
  1. A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party, or the first round of a two-round election.

  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.

  6. Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.

  7. A primary colour.

  8. The first stage of a thermonuclear weapon, which sets off a fission explosion to help trigger a fusion reaction in the weapon's secondary stage.

  9. A radar return from an aircraft (or other object) produced solely by the reflection of the radar beam from the aircraft's skin, without additional information from the aircraft's transponder.

  10. The primary site of a disease; the original location or source of the disease.

    unknown primary
    most common primaries
  11. A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary.

Where this word comes from

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. Doublet of premier.

verb/ˈpɹaɪ.m(ə.)ɹi/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹ.i/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹaɪ.mə.ɹi/Canada, General-American/ˈpɹɑe.m(ə.)ɹiː/Australia
  1. To challenge (an incumbent sitting politician) for their political party's nomination to run for re-election, through running a challenger campaign in a primary election, especially one that is more ideologically extreme.

    US · intransitive · transitive
  2. To take part in a primary election.

    US · intransitive · transitive
Where this word comes from

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. Doublet of premier.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.