Primary

How to spell primary

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce primary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does primary mean?

1. adjectiveFirst in importance, order, or rank; main or most basic.
2. adjectiveRelating to the early years of schooling for young children.
3. nounA preliminary election in which a party chooses its candidate for a later contest.

Primary in a sentence

• adjective

  Reducing costs was the company's primary goal for the year.

• adjective

  Her son starts primary school in September.

• noun

  The senator won the primary by a narrow margin.

• adjective

  The primary cause of the delay was a shortage of parts.

• adjective

  The council plans to build a new primary school near the estate.

• noun

  Voters turned out in large numbers for the state primary.

Where does primary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin primarius, meaning 'of the first rank' or 'chief', which was built on primus, the Latin word for 'first'. The same primus root sits behind a large family of English words, including 'prime', 'primitive', 'premier' and even 'prince', so the spelling always begins with the tell-tale prim. English took primary in around the fifteenth century, at first to mean 'original' or 'earliest in order', and the sense of 'most important' followed naturally because what comes first tends to matter most. The American political meaning, an election to choose party candidates, developed in the nineteenth century from the idea of a first or preliminary vote. The trap for writers is the unstressed ending: it is spelled -ary, not -ery, mirroring its Latin source primarius.

How the word is built

• prim- (from primus: first)
• -ary (adjective/noun suffix meaning relating to)