primacy
/ˈprʌɪməsi
/noun [mass noun]
1The fact of being pre-eminent or most important: London’s primacy as a financial centre...
- First-rate higher education institutions place primacy of importance on research and this is increasingly the case here at Waterford.
- There is always the talk of the importance and needed primacy of primary care in our health care system.
- Science accords primacy to the facts themselves, and requires that conclusions honor them.
Synonyms
greater importance, priority, precedence, pre-eminence, preference, superiority, first place, pride of place, weighting, supremacy, ascendancy, sovereignty, dominance, dominion, leadership
rare paramountcy
2The office, period of office, or authority of a primate of the Church: the first years of his primacy were tranquil...
- But do we really need another in-house hassle over papal primacy versus episcopal collegiality?
- An excellent defense of the need for a reformed universal primacy of the Bishop of Rome in a reunited Church is also included.
- Forster reflected the position on papal primacy taken by the Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission for ecumenical dialogue.
3 [usually as modifier] Psychology The fact of an item having been presented earlier to the subject (especially as increasing its likelihood of being remembered): the primacy effect is thought to reflect recall from a long-term memory store...
- The notion that recognition memory performance is dominated by semantic or conceptual factors has its origin in what Kolers and Roediger referred to as the semantic primacy assumption.
- This pattern of recall is likely the result of the combination of easily recalled semantically related words and primacy effects.
- These findings of long-term priming effects are clearly in opposition to the semantic primacy assumption.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French primatie, from medieval Latin primatia, from Latin primas, primat- 'of the first rank' (see primate1).