Definitions

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

  • adjective First in status or importance; principal or chief.
  • adjective First to occur or exist; earliest.
  • noun A prime minister.
  • noun A chief administrative officer, as of a Canadian province.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • First in importance; chief.
  • First in time; earliest in appearance or occurrence; specifically, in the English peerage, first in the order of precedence, which is now the order of date of creation.
  • noun The first minister of state; the prime or premier minister.
  • noun In roulette, a bet that one of the numbers from 1 to 12 inclusive will win.
  • To govern as premier; serve as prime minister.

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

  • noun The first minister of state; the prime minister.
  • adjective First; chief; principal
  • adjective Most ancient; -- said of the peer bearing the oldest title of his degree.

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

  • adjective Foremost; first or highest in quality or degree.
  • noun politics, UK The leader of the government in parliament and leader of the cabinet.
  • noun politics The government leader in a legislative congress or leader of a government-level administrative body; the head of government.
  • noun nautical, slang The first lieutenant or other second-in-command officer of a ship.
  • verb To perform, display or exhibit for the first time.

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

  • verb be performed for the first time
  • noun the person who holds the position of head of the government in the United Kingdom
  • adjective preceding all others in time
  • adjective first in rank or degree
  • noun the person who is head of state (in several countries)
  • verb perform a work for the first time

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English primier, from Old French, from Latin prīmārius, from prīmus, first; see per in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French premier (as an adjective), from Latin primarius (prīmārius).

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