priority
English
Etymology
From Old French priorite, from Latin prioritas.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /pɹaɪˈɒɹɨti/
- (General American) enPR: prī-ôrʹĭ-tē, IPA(key): /pɹaɪˈɔɹɪ̈ti/
- Rhymes: -ɒɹɪti
- Hyphenation: pri‧or‧i‧ty
Noun
priority (countable and uncountable, plural priorities)
- An item's relative importance.
- He set his e-mail message's priority to high.
- A goal of a person or an organisation.
- She needs to get her priorities straight and stop playing games.
- The quality of being earlier or coming first compared to another thing; the state of being prior.
- In bankruptcy law, a business' debt to its employees has priority over its debt to a landlord, so the employees must be paid first.
- (taxonomy, of a name) A superior claim to use by virtue of being validly published at an earlier date.
- 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page viii:
- Neither [Jones] […] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority."
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- (obsolete) Precedence; superior rank.
- 1608, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, I. i. 244:
- Follow Cominius. We must follow you. / Right worthy you priority.
- 1608, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, I. i. 244:
Derived terms
- aperture priority
- prioritise / prioritize
- prioritization
- shutter priority
- top priority
Translations
item's relative importance
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goal of a person or an organisation
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attributive use — see prioritized