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Primary

//ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹi// adj, noun, verb

Definitions

Adjective

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.
"Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock."
3
Earliest formed; fundamental.
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.

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

Adjective

1
not derived from or reducible to something else; basic wordnet
2
most important element wordnet
3
of first rank or importance or value; direct and immediate rather than secondary wordnet
4
of or being the essential or basic part wordnet

Noun

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.
"In recent primaries, for example, nearly 4% of absentees were rejected in Philadelphia; 8% in Kentucky; and 20% in parts of New York City."
2
a preliminary election where delegates or nominees are chosen wordnet
3
The first year of grade school.
4
one of the main flight feathers projecting along the outer edge of a bird's wing wordnet
5
A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible.

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6
coil forming the part of an electrical circuit such that changing current in it induces a current in a neighboring circuit wordnet
7
The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system, such as a planet in relation to its satellites.
8
(astronomy) a celestial body (especially a star) relative to other objects in orbit around it wordnet
9
A primary school.
"Excellence in Cities offers a further development of this approach, whereby secondary schools operate with small clusters of primaries as mini-EAZs."
10
Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.
"`Good Lord, look at that swiftlet, it's got two primaries missing from its left wing!'"
11
A primary colour.
"By adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced. These are called subtractive primaries."
12
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.
13
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.
14
The primary site of a disease; the original location or source of the disease.
"unknown primary"
15
A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary.

Verb

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
"In the New England town where he ran a “couple of night clubs” . he was “primarying the mayor.""
2
To take part in a primary election. US, intransitive, transitive
"Both were worried that Bailey would break some of their delegate commitments to keep them from primarying."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

Etymology 3

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