1 [usuallybeforenoun] main; most important; basic:
The primary aim of this course is to improve your spoken English. * Our primary concern must be the children. * Good health care is of primary importance.
2 [usuallybeforenoun] developing or happening first; earliest:
primary causes * The disease is still in its primary stage.
3 [onlybeforenoun] (especially BrE) connected with the education of children between the ages of about five and eleven:
primary teachers
compareELEMENTARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY
noun (plural primaries) (also primary election) (in the US) an election in which people in a particular area vote to choose a candidate for a future important election:
the Illinois primary * the presidential primaries
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for primary is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is primary a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, primary is tagged as adjective.
Does primary appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — primary appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.