• (British) IPA: /ˈpɹaɪməɹi/
• (America) enPR: prīʹmĕr-ē, IPA: /ˈpɹaɪˌmɛɹi/ or enPR: prīʹmə-rē, IPA: /ˈpɹaɪməɹi/
• (New Zealand) IPA: /ˈpɹɒeməɹi/, /ˈpɹɒemɹi/

primary

1. first or earliest in a group or series.

   Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.

   • the church of Christ, in its primary institution

   • 1689 (indicated as 1690)​, [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Thomas Basset, […], OCLC 153628242 ↗:

     , Book II, Chapter VIII

     These I call original, or primary, qualities of body.

2. main; principal; chief; 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.

• French: primaire
• Portuguese: primário, primária, primários, primárias
• Russian: перви́чный
• Spanish: primario

• French: prioritaire
• German: primär
• Italian: primario
• Portuguese: primário
• Russian: перви́чный
• Spanish: primario

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

• German: Vorwahl
• Spanish: primarias

• Spanish: primaria, primero

• Spanish: básico

• German: Handschwinge

primary (primaries, present participle primarying; 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