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Primer   /prˈaɪmər/   Listen
noun
Primer  n.  One who, or that which, primes; specifically, An instrument or device for priming; esp., a cap, tube, or water containing percussion powder or other compound for igniting a charge of gunpowder.



Primer  n.  
1.
Originally, a small prayer book for church service, containing the little office of the Virgin Mary; also, a work of elementary religious instruction. "The primer, or office of the Blessed Virgin."
2.
A small elementary book for teaching children to read; a reading or spelling book for a beginner. "As he sat in the school at his prymer."
3.
(Print.) A kind of type, of which there are two species; one, called long primer, intermediate in size between bourgeois and small pica (see Long primer); the other, called great primer, larger than pica. Note: Great primer type.



adjective
Primer  adj.  First; original; primary. (Obs.) "The primer English kings."
Primer fine (O. Eng. Law), a fine due to the king on the writ or commencement of a suit by fine.
Primer seizin (Feudal Law), the right of the king, when a tenant in capite died seized of a knight's fee, to receive of the heir, if of full age, one year's profits of the land if in possession, and half a year's profits if the land was in reversion expectant on an estate for life; now abolished.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Primer" Quotes from Famous Books



... what,' cried Harry Brown, commonly known as 'Carrots' from his fiery hair, 'you could 'a done what the goats did in the primer at school—you ought ter have laid flat down and let her ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... algebra, the construing of verbs, or the drawing of figures. If separate hours merely mean that the master is not to have all his classes up at once—here gabbling Latin or Greek, there discussing the primer or reciting from Scott's Collection, yonder repeating the multiplication table or running over the rules of Lindley Murray—we at once say religion must have its separate hour, just as English, the dead tongues, figuring, writing, and the mathematics, have their separate hours; but if it be meant ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... he warned. But he had come prepared for acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match, showed ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... diligence on this book to-be of mine, that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts are still extant; nay, that, beside friendly men, learned and poetic men read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of the Greek Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a dead child before such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he cannot fashion a better, certainly a bigger.—I am sad to hear that Sterling sails again for his health. I am ungrateful not to have written to him, as his letter was very welcome ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... fine passages of this play, the death of Agamemnon, at the hand of Clytemnes'tra, is a scene that the poet paints with terrible effect. Says MR. EUGENE LAWRENCE, [Footnote: "A Primer of Greek Literature," by Eugene Lawrence, p.55.] "Mr. E. C. Stedman's version of the death of Agamemnon is an excellent one. A horror rests upon the palace at Mycenae; there is a scent of blood, the exhalations of the tomb. The queen, Clytemnestra, enters the inner room, terrible ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson


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