prime
EnglishEdit
Etymology 1Edit
Borrowed from French prime, from Latin primus (“first”), from earlier prīsmos < *prīsemos < Proto-Italic *priisemos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“beyond, before”). Doublet of primo.
The noun sense "apostrophe-like symbol" originates from the fact that the symbol ′ was originally a superscript Roman numeral one.
PronunciationEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime (comparative primer, superlative primest)
- First in importance, degree, or rank.
- First in time, order, or sequence.
- Synonyms: earliest, first, original
- Both the English and French governments established prime meridians in their capitals.
- 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 21:
- I thought it lawful from my forme act, / And the ſame end ; ſtill watching to oppreſs / Iſrael’s oppreſſours : of what now I ſuffer / She was not the prime cauſe, but I my ſelf, / Who vanquiſht with a peal of words (O weakneſs !) / Gave up my fort of ſilence to a Woman.
- 1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Part III”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 52:
- Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump / A league of street in summer solstice down, / Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman.
- 2013, Ralph Denny, Accounts for Solicitors - Page 33:
- The process of recording a transaction in the accounts begins with an entry in what is termed a book of prime entry.
- First in excellence, quality, or value.
- 1820, Thomas Moore; W. Simpkin; R. Marshall, Jack Randall's Diary of Proceedings at the House of Call for Genius:
- Gemmen (says he), you all well know / The joy there is whene'er we meet; / It's what I call the primest go, / And rightly named, 'tis—'quite a treat,' […]
- 1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, “The Child of the Marshalsea”, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC, book the first (Poverty), page 50:
- "Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?" / "Prime," said the turnkey.
- 1861, Isabella Beeton, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management:
- Average cost, 10d. to 18. per lb. for the primest parts.
- (mathematics, lay) Having exactly two integral factors: itself and unity (1 in the case of integers).
- Thirteen is a prime number.
- (mathematics, technical) Such that if it divides a product, it divides one of the multiplicands.
- (mathematics) Having its complement closed under multiplication: said only of ideals.
- Marked or distinguished by the prime symbol.
- Early; blooming; being in the first stage.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 245–248:
- [...] His ſtarrie Helme unbuckl’d ſhew’d him prime / In Manhood where Youth ended ; by his ſide / As in a glittering Zodiac hung the Sword, / Satans dire dread, and in his hand the Spear.
- (obsolete) Lecherous, lewd, lustful.
- c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. […] (First Quarto), London: […] N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii], page 53:
- It is impoſſible you ſhould ſee this, / Were they as prime as Goates, as hot as Monkies, / As ſalt as Wolues, in pride; and fooles as groſſe / As ignorance made drunke: [...]
SynonymsEdit
- (having no nontrivial factors): indivisible
HyponymsEdit
- biprime
- pseudoprime
- semiprime
- (having exactly two integral factors): coprime
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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NounEdit
prime (plural primes)
- (historical) The first hour of daylight; the first canonical hour.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 314:
- His larum bell might lowd and wyde be hard,
When cause requyrd, but neuer out of time;
Early and late it rong, at euening and at prime.
- (Christianity) The religious service appointed to this hour.
- (obsolete) The early morning generally.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 81:
- They all as glad, as birdes of ioyous Pryme […]
- (now rare) The earliest stage of something.
- 1594, Richard Hooker, J[ohn] S[penser], editor, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], 3rd edition, London: […] Will[iam] Stansby [for Matthew Lownes], published 1611, →OCLC, book II, page 69:
- To this end we see how quickly sundry artes Mechanical were found out in the very prime of the world.
- 1645, Edmund Waller, “To a very young Lady” (earlier title: “To my young Lady Lucy Sidney”) in Poems, &c. Written upon Several Occasions, and to Several Persons, London: H. Herringman, 1686, p. 101,[1]
- Hope waits upon the flowry prime,
- The most active, thriving, or successful stage or period.
- 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 12”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […][2], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:
- When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o'er with white;
- 1700, [John] Dryden, “Sigismonda and Guiscardo, from Boccace”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 124:
- Short were her Marriage-Joys; for in the Prime, / Of Youth, her Lord expir’d before his time: […]
- 1813, John Chetwode Eustace, chapter 10, in A Tour through Italy[3], volume 1, London: J. Mawman, pages 225-226:
- None but foreigners, excluded by their religion from the cemeteries of the country, are deposited here […] . The far greater part had been cut off in their prime, by unexpected disease or fatal accident.
- 1965, Bob Dylan (lyrics and music), “Like a Rolling Stone”:
- Once upon a time you dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
- 2012 April 29, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Treehouse of Horror III” (season 4, episode 5; originally aired 10/29/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):
- And it’s daunting because each segment has to tell a full, complete story in something like six minutes while doing justice to revered source material and including the non-stop laughs and genius gags that characterized The Simpsons in its god-like prime.
- The chief or best individual or part.
- 1726, Jonathan Swift, “To a Lady, who desired the author to write some verses upon her in the heroic style” in The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London: W. Bowyer et al., Volume 7, p. 396,[4]
- Give no more to ev’ry guest
- Than he’s able to digest:
- Give him always of the prime;
- And but a little at a time.
- 1726, Jonathan Swift, “To a Lady, who desired the author to write some verses upon her in the heroic style” in The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London: W. Bowyer et al., Volume 7, p. 396,[4]
- (music) The first note or tone of a musical scale.
- (fencing) The first defensive position, with the sword hand held at head height, and the tip of the sword at head height.
- (algebra, number theory) A prime element of a mathematical structure, particularly a prime number.
- 2013 July-August, Sarah Glaz, “Ode to Prime Numbers”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4:
- Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.
- 3 is a prime.
- (card games) A four-card hand containing one card of each suit in the game of primero; the opposite of a flush in poker.
- (backgammon) Six consecutive blocks, which prevent the opponent's pieces from passing.
- I'm threatening to build a prime here.
- The symbol ′ used to indicate feet, minutes, derivation and other measures and mathematical operations.
- (chemistry, obsolete) Any number expressing the combining weight or equivalent of any particular element; so called because these numbers were respectively reduced to their lowest relative terms on the fixed standard of hydrogen as 1.
- An inch, as composed of twelve seconds in the duodecimal system.
- (obsolete) The priming in a flintlock.
- 1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar[5], London, pages 95-96:
- […] he pull’d the Trigger, but Providence being pleas’d to preserve me for some other Purpose, the Cock snapp’d, and miss’d Fire. Whether the Prime was wet in the Pan, or by what other Miracle it was I escap’d his Fury, I cannot say […]
- (film) Contraction of prime lens, a film lens.
- Tomlinson, Shawn M. (2015) Going Pro for $200 & How to Choose a Prime Lens, →ISBN: “By the time I shifted to my first autofocus film SLR with the Pentax PZ-10, primes were considered things of the past”
- A feather, from the wing of the cock ostrich, that is of the palest possible shade.
SynonymsEdit
- (early morning generally): See Thesaurus:early morning or Thesaurus:morning
- (most active, thriving, or successful stage or period): bloom, blossom, efflorescence, flower, flush, heyday, peak
- (chief or best individual or part): choice, prize, quality, select
- (algebra: prime element of a mathematical structure): prime number (when an integer)
- ( A feather, from the wing of the cock ostrich, that is of the palest possible shade.): white
AntonymsEdit
- (algebra: prime element of a mathematical structure): composite
HyponymsEdit
- additive prime
- annihilating prime
- Bell prime
- Carol prime
- Catalan prime
- centered decagonal prime
- centered heptagonal prime
- centered square prime
- centered triangular prime
- Chen prime
- circular prime
- cousin prime
- Cuban prime
- Cullen prime
- delannoy prime
- deletable prime
- dihedral prime
- double factorial prime
- double Mersenne prime
- Eisenstein prime without imaginary part
- emirp
- Euclid-Mullin Sequence prime
- Euclid prime
- Euler irregular prime
- even prime
- factorial prime
- Fermat prime
- Fibonacci prime
- fortunate prime
- Gaussian prime
- generalized Fermat prime base 10
- Genocchi prime
- Gilda's prime
- good prime
- happy prime
- harmonic prime
- Higgs prime for squares
- highly cototient prime
- illegal prime
- irregular prime
- isolated prime
- Kynea prime
- left-truncatable prime
- Leyland prime
- long prime
- Lucas prime
- lucky prime
- Markov prime
- Mersenne prime
- Mills prime
- minimal prime
- Motzkin prime
- Newman–Shanks–Williams prime
- non-generous prime
- odd prime
- Padovan prime
- palindromic prime
- palindromic wing prime
- partition prime
- Pell prime
- permutable prime
- Perrin prime
- Pierpont prime
- Pillai prime
- prime of Binary Quadratic Form
- prime triplet
- primeval prime
- primorial prime
- Proth prime
- Pythagorean prime
- Quartan prime
- Ramanujan prime
- regular prime
- repunit prime
- right-truncatable prime
- safe prime
- Schröder-Hipparchus prime
- Schröder prime
- self prime
- sexy prime
- Smarandache-Wellin prime
- Smarandache–Wellin prime
- Solinas prime
- Sophie Germain prime
- star prime
- Stern prime
- super-prime
- supersingular prime
- swinging prime
- Thabit prime
- titanic prime
- twin prime
- two-sided prime
- Ulam prime
- unique prime
- Wagstaff prime
- Wall–Sun–Sun prime
- Weakly primes
- Wedderburn-Etherington prime
- Wieferich prime
- Wilson prime
- Wolstenholme prime
- Woodall prime
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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Etymology 2Edit
Related to primage and primus.
PronunciationEdit
VerbEdit
prime (third-person singular simple present primes, present participle priming, simple past and past participle primed)
- (transitive) To prepare a mechanism for its main work.
- You'll have to press this button twice to prime the fuel pump.
- (transitive) To apply a coat of primer paint to.
- I need to prime these handrails before we can apply the finish coat.
- (obsolete, intransitive) To be renewed.
- 1634, Francis Quarles, “My Soule Hath Desired Thee in the Night”, in Emblemes, London: G. M., published 1635, book III, page 129:
- Nights baſhfull Empreſſe, though ſhe often wayne, / As oft repents her darkneſſe ; primes againe ; / And with her circling Hornes does re-embrace / Her brothers wealth, and orbs her ſilver face.
- (intransitive) To serve as priming for the charge of a gun.
- (intransitive, of a steam boiler) To work so that foaming occurs from too violent ebullition, which causes water to become mixed with, and be carried along with, the steam that is formed.
- 1959 April, P. Ransome-Wallis, “The Southern in Trouble on the Kent Coast”, in Trains Illustrated, London: Ian Allan Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 220:
- Although we took our eight bogies along to Whitstable at 60 m.p.h., and made a clean start from there, after Herne Bay the engine primed badly on Blacksole Bank and nearly stopped before we got over the top. Then we ran like the wind across the marshes with half-regulator, 30 per cent cut-off, and the engine blowing off.
- To apply priming to (a musket or cannon); to apply a primer to (a metallic cartridge).
- To prepare; to make ready; to instruct beforehand; to coach.
- to prime a witness
- The boys are primed for mischief.
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Dobbin of Ours”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 42:
- “He’s priming himself,” Osborne whispered to Dobbin, and at length the hour and the carriage arrived for Vauxhall.
- (UK, dialect, obsolete) To trim or prune.
- to prime trees
- (mathematics) To mark with a prime mark.
SynonymsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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Etymology 3Edit
From French prime (“reward, prize, bonus”).
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
prime (plural primes)
- (cycling) An intermediate sprint within a race, usually offering a prize and/or points.
- 1997, Arnie Baker, Smart Cycling: Successful Training and Racing for Riders of All Levels:
- Most primes are won with gaps on the field; most sprints are in bunches.
Derived termsEdit
Related termsEdit
AnagramsEdit
AlbanianEdit
EtymologyEdit
From proj (“to guard, defend”).[1]
NounEdit
prime f pl (definite plural primet)
Related termsEdit
ReferencesEdit
- ^ Orel, Vladimir (1998), “prime”, in Albanian Etymological Dictionary, Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, →ISBN, page 345
FrenchEdit
EtymologyEdit
From the feminine of Old French prim, prin, from Latin prīmus, from earlier prīsmos < *prīsemos < Proto-Italic *priisemos.
Noun from English premium.
PronunciationEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime (plural primes)
- first thing
- Reposons-nous ici et allons chercher la prime demain. ― Let's rest here and go looking first thing tomorrow.
Derived termsEdit
NounEdit
prime f (plural primes)
Derived termsEdit
DescendantsEdit
Further readingEdit
- “prime”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
AnagramsEdit
InterlinguaEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime
ItalianEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime
AnagramsEdit
LatinEdit
NumeralEdit
prīme
ReferencesEdit
- “prime”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- prime in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
RomanianEdit
PronunciationEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime
SpanishEdit
VerbEdit
prime
TarantinoEdit
AdjectiveEdit
prime