Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use primary in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Primary means first or earliest in a group or series. Example: “Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.”

Examples of primary by meaning

adjectiveFirst or earliest in a group or series.

  • Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.

adjectiveEarliest formed; fundamental.

  • Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock.

nounA primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party, or the first round of...

  • In recent primaries, for example, nearly 4% of absentees were rejected in Philadelphia; 8% in Kentucky; and 20% in parts of New York City.2020 September 14, Richard H. Pildes, “The three words that can avert an election nightmare”, in CNN

nounA primary school.

  • Excellence in Cities offers a further development of this approach, whereby secondary schools operate with small clusters of primaries as mini-EAZs.2001, David Woods, Martyn Cribb, Effective LEAs and school improvement

nounAny flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.

  • `Good Lord, look at that swiftlet, it's got two primaries missing from its left wing!'2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 115

nounA primary colour.

  • By adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced.2003, Julie A Jacko, Andrew Sears, The human-computer interaction handbook

nounThe primary site of a disease; the original location or source of the disease.

  • most common primaries

verbTo challenge (an incumbent sitting politician) for their political party's nomination to run for re-election, through...

  • In the New England town where he ran a “couple of night clubs” . he was “primarying the mayor."1974, Stan Steiner, The Islands: the Worlds of the Puerto Ricans, page 191
  • What political facts of life underpin the hopes and dreams of democratic politicians who would take on the awesome task of “primarying” a two-term incumbent governor1980, Empire State Report, volumes 6-7, page 303
  • Each of the past few election cycles has featured at least one instance of “primarying,” a challenge to an incumbent on the grounds that he or she is not sufficiently partisan.2014, Sanford L. Jacobs, The Little Black Book of Political Wisdom

More sentences with primary

  • Her diagnoses include type 2 diabetes mellitus, primary hypertension, diabetic retinopathy, and generalized anxiety disorder.From the entry diagnosis
  • Some amount of basic geography is part of any good curriculum for primary and secondary education.From the entry geography
  • Yellow is a secondary light color, though a primary CMYK color.From the entry secondary
  • I just got an email invitation to a webinar on the value of primary sources.From the entry webinar
  • The child's mother was tearful as he boarded the bus for his first day of primary school.From the entry primary school
  • With a big victory in the primary, he was sitting in the catbird seat.From the entry catbird seat
  • He got caught double-dipping by billing the government directly as well as the primary contractor.From the entry double-dip
  • Illinois is expected to support its native son in the presidential primary.From the entry native son
  • The museum displayed the scientist's primary adversaria under a protective glass case.From the entry adversaria
  • The evidence found at the crime scene was not linkable to the primary suspect.From the entry linkable
  • Renal underexcretion of uric acid is the primary cause of hyperuricemia in about 90% of cases.From the entry underexcretion
  • As friends, we go way back: we met in primary school.From the entry way back
  • Only half the delegates from the state were seated at the convention because the state held its primary too early.From the entry seat
  • The primary scripture in Zoroastrianism is the Avesta.From the entry scripture
  • My primary school is a good place to study.From the entry primary school
  • Red, blue and green are additive primary colours.From the entry primary colour
  • Magenta, yellow and cyan are subtractive primary colours.From the entry primary colour
  • Red, blue and green are additive primary colors.From the entry primary color
  • Magenta, yellow and cyan are subtractive primary colors.From the entry primary color
  • Geography is overtaught in my son's primary school.From the entry overteach
  • English and Cantonese are the mediums of instruction in most Hong Kong schools at the primary and secondary level.From the entry medium of instruction
  • The airplane's primary flight controls comprise elevators and ailerons driven by manually-controlled servo tabs, and a hydraulically-powered rudder and spoilerons.From the entry flight control
  • Sure, this candidate is the favorite in the primary among the party faithful, but how is he going to do in the general?From the entry general
  • A rainbow truly contains thousands of color values but can usually be discretized by human sentience into bands of primary and secondary colors.From the entry discretize
  • Some proteins have a primary function of acting as enzymes, but moonlight by carrying out secondary roles such as signal transduction or transcriptional regulation.From the entry moonlight
  • The endogens constitute one of the great primary classes of plants, and include all palms, true lilies, grasses, rushes, orchids, the banana, pineapple, etc.From the entry endogen
  • We weren't sure which columns in the table would have unique values, so we used a separate surrogate key as the primary key.From the entry surrogate key
  • The primary issue with doomjobbing is the immediate trigger of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).2026 May 15, Unattributed, “Doomjobbing Signs 2026 Trend: Why This Mass-Application Addiction Destroys Career Growth”, in Uptick Times…. From the entry doomjobbing
  • One of the primary benefits of calque is its ability to enhance cross-cultural communication.2024 June 7, Soumaya Amine Al Salti, “Calque Examples in Translating: Impacts on Linguistic Diversity”, in Soumaya Salti, archived from…. From the entry calque
  • Primaries brownish with numerous straw-colored spots ocellated with carneous inclining to pink.2024, Chas. V. Riley, “Descriptions of some New Tortricidæ (Leaf-rollers).”, in The Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. From the entry carneous

Meaning of primary

  1. adjective First or earliest in a group or series.
  2. adjective Main; principal; chief; placed ahead of others.
  3. adjective Earliest formed; fundamental.

Full definition of primary

Questions about primary in a sentence

How do you use primary in a sentence?
Primary is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “Children attend primary school, and teenagers attend secondary school.”
What is a short sentence with primary?
“most common primaries”
What does primary mean?
Primary means first or earliest in a group or series.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: primary (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use primary in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/primary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.