Word.ws English Dictionary

false primary

false primary noun: any flight feather that appears between the primaries and secondaries on a bird's wing.

Noun

false primary (plural false primaries)

  1. (rare) Any flight feather that appears between the primaries and secondaries on a bird's wing.
    • The false primary about one third the length of the first, which is shorter than the fourth.1875, Charles Robert Bree, A History of the Birds of Europe
    • These Owls, in conjunction with some other species of their kind, have a marked peculiarity—i.e., the outer barbs of the first true primary and of the first false primary feathers have no barbules.1905, The Emu: Official Organ of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union - Volumes 4-5

Forms of false primary

pluralfalse primaries

Questions about false primary

What does false primary mean?
False primary means any flight feather that appears between the primaries and secondaries on a bird's wing.
What part of speech is false primary?
False primary is a noun.
What is the plural of false primary?
The plural of false primary is false primaries.

Words near false primary in the dictionary

  1. false pretence
  2. false pretences
  3. false pretense
  4. false pretenses
  5. false primaries
  6. false primary
  7. false quarter
  8. false quarters
  9. false Queen Anne's lace
  10. false rail
  11. false rails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false primary (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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