How to Use primacy in a Sentence

primacy

noun
  • She has established primacy in her field of study.
  • Civil law took primacy over religious law.
  • For a time, the junta seemed to be keeping threats to its primacy at bay.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 7 Dec. 2023
  • This is a case study in the failure of shareholder primacy.
    — Paul Polman, Fortune, 14 Mar. 2026
  • Coogler was deeply moved by the clear primacy of Tatiana in Grant’s short life.
    — Jelani Cobb, New Yorker, 28 Apr. 2025
  • The answers might hinge in part on which narrative gains primacy.
    — George Schroeder, USA TODAY, 26 Oct. 2017
  • Each bite reveals new flavors as the many forms of umami jostle for primacy.
    — New York Times, 17 Dec. 2021
  • This, of course, is a partial list, and every item on it will be competing for primacy.
    — Jeff Shesol, The New Republic, 14 Oct. 2020
  • India, in fact, holds this primacy, with many hundreds of new films released every year.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 May 2026
  • In such cases, the rights of the child take primacy over the parents' right to decide what's best for their offspring.
    — Fox News, 25 Apr. 2018
  • In such cases, the rights of the child take primacy over the parents’ right to decide what’s best for their offspring.
    — Danica Kirka and Sylvia Hui, BostonGlobe.com, 28 Apr. 2018
  • In such cases, the rights of the child take primacy over the parents' right to decide what's best for their offspring.
    — Danica Kirka and Sylvia Hui, chicagotribune.com, 28 Apr. 2018
  • The school of shareholder primacy would come to be taken up as gospel by the business ecosystem.
    — Abigail Disney For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, 20 Oct. 2020
  • In such cases, the rights of the child take primacy over the parents’ right to decide what’s best for their daughters and sons.
    — Washington Post, 28 Apr. 2018
  • The primacy of data is one of the few constants in this AI madness.
    — Nick Burling, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Is their intent to move us somehow out of East Asia and take primacy of the region?
    — CBS News, 1 Feb. 2023
  • The doctrine reached its peak with shareholder primacy.
    — Steve Denning, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
  • In the later years of its primacy, though, the world was ripe for a new art about things, and recognizable images.
    — Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News, 21 Feb. 2026
  • Putting them in order, let alone selecting one out of the crowd for primacy would feel, well, immature and even risky.
    — Eric Zorn, chicagotribune.com, 16 July 2019
  • Of course, Tomas feels the urge to reassert his primacy in Martin’s life as a result.
    — Vulture, 17 Oct. 2023
  • The rise of collectives might also signal a shift in the primacy of certain arts over others.
    — New York Times, 13 Oct. 2021
  • In the past decade, the primacy of single-family zoning has been challenged.
    — Eric Kober For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, 6 Jan. 2020
  • The primacy effect is how people tend to remember the first time something happens, or the first item on a list.
    — Kate Knibbs, Wired, 21 Apr. 2020
  • For both Russia and the US, nukes have retained their primacy.
    — The Economist, 25 Jan. 2018
  • The books that made sense to me at the time were those that questioned the primacy of the heteronormative family.
    — Emily Witt, The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 2019
  • In reality, the war in Ukraine should be a stark reminder of the limits of armed primacy.
    — Harper’s Magazine , 17 Aug. 2022
  • One is the primacy of the needs of parents and families in policy-making.
    — Yana Kunichoff, The Arizona Republic, 11 July 2022
  • Meanwhile, some see a race to claim primacy between those who still believe in Damascus and those who want to just be done.
    — oregonlive.com, 22 June 2019
  • The worry is that the Lynch case could create a precedent around the primacy of one legal system over the other.
    — Chris Stokel-Walker, Wired, 28 Jan. 2022
  • Many Americans would probably like to see these values have primacy in the rest of the nation.
    — Giang Nguyen-Dien, The Conversation, 27 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'primacy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: