Word.ws English Dictionary

principia

principia noun: first principles; elementary material.

Noun

principia pl (normally plural, singular principium)

  1. (archaic, plural, plural-normally) First principles; elementary material.
    • I do really think, that your book […] might become an institute, containing the principia of those laws of motion, by which the system of the human community is framed and doth act […]1776, Thomas Pownall, in a letter to the economist Adam Smith
    • They were her principia, her rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfection.1833, Elia [pseudonym; Charles Lamb], “Barbara S⁠——”, in The Last Essays of Elia. […], London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 116

Forms of principia

singularprincipium

Origin of principia

Learned borrowing from Latin prī̆ncipia.

Questions about principia

What does principia mean?
Principia means first principles; elementary material.
What part of speech is principia?
Principia is a noun.

Words near principia in the dictionary

  1. Principense
  2. principes
  3. principessa
  4. principessas
  5. principi
  6. principia
  7. principial
  8. principiant
  9. principiate
  10. principiated
  11. principiates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: principia (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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