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Definition of "primarily" []

  • Chiefly; mainly: a scholastic program primarily for seniors; a primarily middle-class neighborhood. (adverb)
  • At first; originally. (adverb)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "primarily" in a sentence
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "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)."