different between primary vs beginning

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin pr?m?rius (“of the first (rank); chief, principal; excellent”), from pr?mus (first; whence the English adjective prime) + -?rius (whence the English suffix -ary); compare the French primaire, primer, and premier.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p?a?m??i/
• (US) enPR: pr??m?r-?, IPA^(key): /?p?a??m??i/ or enPR: pr??m?-r?, IPA^(key): /?p?a?m??i/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?p??em??i/, /?p??em?i/

Adjective

primary (comparative more primary, superlative most primary)

1. first or earliest in a group or series.
   • 1659, John Pearson, Exposition of the Creed

     the church of Christ, in its primary institution

   • , Book II, Chapter VIII

     These I call original, or primary, qualities of body.

2. main; principal; chief; placed ahead of others.

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

3. (geology) Earliest formed; fundamental.
4. (chemistry) Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement.
5. (medicine) Relating to the place where a disorder or disease started to occur.
6. (medicine) Relating to day-to-day care provided by health professionals such as nurses, general practitioners, dentists etc.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• first
• primus inter pares

Noun

primary (plural primaries)

1. A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party.
2. The first year of grade school.
3. A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible.
4. The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system, such as a planet in relation to its satellites.
5. A primary school.
   • 2001, David Woods, Martyn Cribb, Effective LEAs and school improvement

     Excellence in Cities offers a further development of this approach, whereby secondary schools operate with small clusters of primaries as mini-EAZs.

6. (ornithology) Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.
7. A primary colour.
   • 2003, Julie A Jacko, Andrew Sears, The human-computer interaction handbook

     By adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced. These are called subtractive primaries.

8. (military) The first stage of a thermonuclear weapon, which sets off a fission explosion to help trigger a fusion reaction in the weapon's secondary stage.
9. (aviation) A radar return from an aircraft (or other object) produced solely by the reflection of the radar beam from the aircraft's skin, without additional information from the aircraft's transponder.
10. (medicine) Primary site of disease; original location or source of the disease.

11. (electronics) A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary

Translations

References

• primary on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

primary (third-person singular simple present primaries, present participle primarying, simple past and past participle primaried)

1. (US, politics, transitive, intransitive) To challenge (an incumbent sitting politician) for their political party's nomination to run for re-election, through running a challenger campaign in a primary election, especially one that is more ideologically extreme.
2. (US, intransitive, transitive) To take part in a primary election.

Further reading

• primary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• primary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Alternative forms

• begynnynge (obsolete)

Pronunciation

• enPR: b?g?'n?ng, IPA^(key): /b????.n??/

Etymology 1

From Middle English biginning, beginninge, beginnunge, equivalent to begin +? -ing.

Noun

beginning (countable and uncountable, plural beginnings)

1. (uncountable) The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance into being or upon a course; the first act, effort, or state of a succession of acts or states.
2. That which is begun; a rudiment or element.
3. That which begins or originates something; the source or first cause.

   What was the beginning of the dispute?

4. The initial portion of some extended thing.

   The author describes the main character's youth at the beginning of the story.

   That house is at the beginning of the street.

   • 1975, Frances Keinzley, The Cottage at Chapelyard, page 179,

     "Is anything the matter?" Lady Lindstrom asked anxiously.

     "No," Megan told her. "I'm merely trying to decide where the beginning is."

     "Perhaps at the beginning," the Chief Constable prompted, rather stupidly, Megan thought.

     "Which beginning?" she asked.

Usage notes

"In the beginning" is an idiomatic expression that means "at first, initially"; it does not mean the same as "at the beginning".

The meaning of "at the beginning" is clear from its parts. This expression is used to refer to the time when or place where something starts; it is used to refer to points in time and space and also to fairly long periods of time and fairly large extents of space. ("At the beginning of the story" can be used to refer to both the first few sentences and to the first chapter or chapters. "At the beginning of the trail" can be used to refer to both the first few meters and the first part of a trail, which can be quite substantial, even a fifth or fourth or more.)

The originally rare and traditionally deprecated usage of "in the beginning of" (instead of "at the beginning of") has become more common but is still ignored by most dictionaries and other authorities or labeled as unidiomatic or incorrect. Interestingly, there is only rarely confusion between the parallel expressions "in the end" and "at the end (of)".

Synonyms

• (act of doing that which begins anything): commencing, start, starting
• (that which is begun; rudiment or element): element, embryo, rudiment
• (that which begins or originates something): origin, source, start, commencement
• (initial portion of some extended thing): head, start

Antonyms

• (act of doing that which begins anything): conclusion, end

Derived terms

• a good beginning makes a good ending
• beginning of day
• in the beginning

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English begynnyng, bygynnynge, From Old English *beginnende (attested only as Old English onginnende), from Proto-Germanic *biginnandz, present participle of Proto-Germanic *biginnan? (“to begin”), equivalent to begin +? -ing.

Verb

beginning

1. present participle of begin

Adjective

beginning (not comparable)

1. (informal) Of or relating to the first portion of some extended thing.

   in the beginning paragraph of the chapter

   in the beginning section of the course

Translations

Synonyms

• first
• initial