Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb Chiefly; mainly.
  • adverb At first; originally.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In the first or most important place; originally; in the first intention.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb In a primary manner; in the first place; in the first place; in the first intention; originally.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb focus Of a primary or central nature, first and foremost

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb of primary import
  • adverb for the most part

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

primary +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, _the assertion_ that this new method of inquiry _does apply_, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are _primarily concerned_; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.

    The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Delia Bacon 1835

  • Schott was a local car dealer who inherited the team when her husband died, and made her name primarily because of her loutish behavior and her everpresent St. Bernard, an obnoxious mutt named Schottzie.

    WHY is the FOUL POLE FAIR? VINCE STATEN 2003

  • This was probably the meaning of the term primarily; but as early as the reign of Edward I, it was employed to denote counsel below the state and degree of serjeant at law; one degree corresponding to that of bachelor, and the other to that of doctor, in the universities (Pearce's History of the Inns of Court, 28).

    An Essay on Professional Ethics Second Edition George Sharswood

  • Chicago Loop Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to

    WN.com - Articles related to Disney to close 5 ESPN Zone restaurants 2010

  • A term primarily used in the United States, it refers to machines with moving parts smaller than a human hair that contain both electrical and mechanical components on silicon.

    unknown title 2009

  • A term primarily used in the United States, it refers to machines with moving parts smaller than a human hair that contain both electrical and mechanical components on silicon.

    unknown title 2009

  • A term primarily used in the United States, it refers to machines with moving parts smaller than a human hair that contain both electrical and mechanical components on silicon.

    unknown title 2009

  • Today we associate the term primarily with Kitaj, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and Leon Kossoff.

    unknown title 2009

  • Conservative ideologies are typically more friendly to this emerging stream simply because they are skeptical of the innate nature of man as being good but they remain primarily idealistic in nature nevertheless.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » A Follow-on Drone Hearing 2010

  • But a hobby grower such as Cervantes knows that the highest quality and most potent marijuana is made primarily from the unpollinated female flower buds, of choice strains.

    Boutique buds: What underground mom-and-pop growers did while we debated legalization Adrian Higgins 2010

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