primacy

UK/ˈpɹaɪ.mə.si//ˈpɹaɪ.mə.si/

primacy noun: the state or condition of being prime or first, as in time, place, rank, preference etc.

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Noun

primacy (usually uncountable, plural primacies)

(usually) The state or condition of being prime or first, as in time, place, rank, preference etc.
- establish the primacy of something
- acknowledge the primacy of something
Synonyms:

preeminence
(archaic, usually) Excellence; supremacy.
(usually) The office, rank, or character of a primate (chief ecclesiastical dignity in a church).
- Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor in Eastern Orthodoxy, emphasized the many areas of agreement between Pope Francis and himself in response to the social concerns of the day.December 2 2016, Ecumenical Patriarch points to areas of agreement with Pope, Catholic World News
(usually, Anglicanism) The office or dignity of an archbishop.

primacy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

primacy in Hindi

the state or condition of being prime or first: प्राथमिकता prāthmiktā, वरीयता varīytā

primacy in Tamil

தலைமைச் சிறப்பு, முதன்மை, தலையாயமை, திருகோவில் தலைமைச் சிறப்பு

primacy in Urdu

اول پن, صادقی

primacy in Bengali

প্রধানত্ব, সর্বপ্রধান হওয়ার অবস্থা

More languagesFewer languages

primacy in Malayalam: സർവ്വപ്രമുഖത, പ്രാഥമ്യം, ഒന്നാം സ്ഥാനം, മൗഖ്യം

Examples of primacy in a sentence

The court affirmed the primacy of federal law.
He argued for the primacy of reason over emotion.
It debunks the primacy of word over image in Western culture and suggests that the two are equal partners in meaning-making.December 25 2016, Amruta Patil, “The book in my hand”, in The Hindu:
The primacy of macroscopy in paleopathology means that the activation of skeletal disease scripts occurs with similar facility and rapidity when skeletal remains are examined.2023, Simon Mays, “The Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Paleopathology” (chapter 2), in The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology...

All 23 example sentences with primacy

Synonyms of primacy

preeminence

Forms of primacy

plural	primacies

Origin of primacy

From Old French primacie, from Medieval Latin primatia (“office of a church primate”), from Latin primas plus a suffix corresponding to -acy. By surface analysis, prime + -acy.

Words formed from primacy

Phrases with primacy

primacy effects

Questions about primacy

What does primacy mean?: Primacy means the state or condition of being prime or first, as in time, place, rank, preference etc.
What is primacy in Hindi?: Primacy in Hindi is प्राथमिकता (prāthmiktā), वरीयता (varīytā). See Primacy meaning in Hindi.
How do you use primacy in a sentence?: The court affirmed the primacy of federal law.
What part of speech is primacy?: Primacy is a noun.
How do you pronounce primacy?: Primacy is pronounced /ˈpɹaɪ.mə.si/ (UK).
What is the plural of primacy?: The plural of primacy is primacies.

Words near primacy in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: primacy (page history and authors); primacy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primacy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primacy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primacy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-primacy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “primacy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/primacy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.