Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Primarily   Listen
adverb
Primarily  adv.  In a primary manner; in the first place; in the first place; in the first intention; originally.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Primarily" Quotes from Famous Books



... to be. Neither of the parties primarily interested made any advances to the other, and each was left to pursue its own line of policy. As a consequence the moderate Conservatives henceforth voted as one man. They saw the Radical element assuming ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... primarily a lumberman and backwoods farmer, he was also a hunter's guide, so expert that his services in this direction were not to be obtained without very special inducement. At "calling" moose he was acknowledged to have no rival. When he laid his grimly-humourous lips to the long tube of birch-bark, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... voluntary and involuntary, taken in another and more obvious sense, is the basis of legislation. His conception of justice and injustice is complicated (1) by the want of a distinction between justice and virtue, that is to say, between the quality which primarily regards others, and the quality in which self and others are equally regarded; (2) by the confusion of doing and suffering justice; (3) by the unwillingness to renounce the old Socratic ...
— Laws • Plato

... temporarily the "here" and the "now" into the "there" and the "then." The process is a precious one and should not be interrupted and confused by the interjection of remote or impersonal material. He still thinks and feels primarily through his own immediate experiences. If this is interfered with he is left without his natural material for experimentation for he cannot yet experiment easily in the world of the intangible. Moreover to the child the familiar ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... Adam Wayne had grown strongly and silently in a certain quality or capacity which is in modern cities almost entirely artificial, but which can be natural, and was primarily almost brutally natural in him, the quality or capacity of patriotism. It exists, like other virtues and vices, in a certain undiluted reality. It is not confused with all kinds of other things. A child speaking of his country or his village may ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... aeronautics, volunteer opinions, criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits and photographs of himself, and generally spread his personality across the terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily upon an immense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness behind the moustache. The general impression upon the public was that Butteridge, was a small man. No one big, it was felt, could have so virulently ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... would have it, the mystery was explained a few minutes later through the efficacy of Mrs. Marsh. We entered into conversation, and almost immediately she volunteered certain details regarding Miss Kingsley, brought about primarily by ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... poetry was primarily written to be sung is forgotten, and even in France the chant of the Alexandrine, which both Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt restored, was lost in a monotonous recitation. For myself, I tried to get to the root of the matter by reading Thomas Campion—Charles ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... thou takest to persuade thyself, that the lady's ill health is owing to the vile arrest, and to the implacableness of her friends. Both primarily (if they were) to be laid at thy door. What poor excuses will good hearts make for the evils they are put upon by bad hearts!—But 'tis no wonder that he who can sit down premeditatedly to do a bad action, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... here introduced is at all times large, the character of the species is of even greater import. Derived primarily from dirt and fecal matter, it is no wonder that such forms are able to produce very ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... reason: she was a woman. Lord Panmure, however, was (though indeed the reason for that was not quite so simple); and it was upon Lord Panmure that the issue of Miss Nightingale's efforts for reform must primarily depend. That burly Scottish nobleman had not, in spite of his most earnest endeavours, had a very easy time of it as Secretary of State for War. He had come into office in the middle of the SebastopolCampaign, and had felt himself very well fitted for the position, since he had acquired ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... commonplace, she was fitted to have become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow, money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them, primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though he had failed, to the last he had been goaded on by his one eager, grasping hope. He had drummed into her head the single lesson that ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... designate further of what sort it was, whether vegetable garden, orchard, or palm-grove. The scribe would even add "planted with such and such a crop." The term might include vineyards. In many cases the actual number of bushes, or fruit-trees, or vine-stocks, would be named. But it was always primarily land, and as such bitu, with the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... history. The biographies and policies, for example, of Sennacherib and Cyrus, are almost as well known as those of Napoleon and Washington. The prophets are not merely voices, but men with a living message for all times, because they primarily dealt with the conditions and needs of their own day. The vital relation and at the same time the infinite superiority of the religious teachings of the Old Testament to those of earlier ages and peoples are ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... to Soame Jenyns; who, after having wandered in the wilds of infidelity, had returned to the Christian faith[814]. Mr. Langton asked Johnson as to the propriety of sapienti consultus. JOHNSON. 'Though consultus was primarily an adjective, like amicus it came to be used as a substantive. So we have Juris ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... that while primarily rare masterpieces are included in the "King's Classics," modern popular classics, more especially such as have not yet been adequately or at all annotated, are ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... the people to be accorded an immediate audience and a direct means of making their will effective in affairs. The government had, in fact, been originated and organized upon the initiative and primarily in the interest of the mercantile and wealthy classes. Originally conceived as an effort to accommodate commercial disputes between the States, it had been urged to adoption by a minority, under the concerted and aggressive leadership ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... for every one of us than ourself. Unamuno is therefore right in the line of Spanish tradition in dealing predominantly—one might almost say always—with his own person. The feeling of the awareness of one's own personality has seldom been more forcibly expressed than by Unamuno. This is primarily due to the fact that he is himself obsessed by it. But in his expression of it Unamuno derives also some strength from his own sense of matter and the material—again a typically Spanish element of his character. Thus his human beings are as ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... so. History is coarse; it gets on by gross feeding and fevers, not by delicacy of temperance and wisdom of regimen. Our debt was to be paid, not in a pure form, but mixed with the costs of unbelief, cowardice, avarice. Yet primarily it is the cost, not of meanness, but of magnanimity, that we are now paying,—not of a base skepticism, but of a noble faith. For, in truth, normal qualities and actions involve costs no less than vicious and abnormal. Such is the law of the world; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... pure mathematics, on the other hand, is primarily to the mind and spirit: the fact that man uses it to get himself out of his physical predicaments is more or less by the way. Consider for a moment this paradox. Mathematics, the very thing common sense swears by and dotes on, contradicts common sense at every turn. Common sense balks at the idea ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... Primarily a dramatic poet, he obtained one of the striking successes of the latter half of the century by his drama la Fille de Roland (1875) which, evoking memories of recent disaster and the dearest hopes of France, deeply touched the patriotic sentiment of his country. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... primarily a disease of the nervous system or liver rather than of the kidneys, yet, as the most prominent symptom is the sweet urine, it ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... to admit that freedom of interoceanic transit depends upon predominance in a maritime region—the Caribbean Sea—through which pass all the approaches to the Isthmus. Control of a maritime region is insured primarily by a navy; secondarily, by positions, suitably chosen and spaced one from the other, upon which as bases the navy rests, and from which it can exert its strength. At present the positions of the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... of purging were not then in being, nor their personal sins in act? And note, he saith, he purged them, before he sat down at the right hand of God: purging then, in this place, cannot first, and primarily, respect the purging of the conscience: but the taking, the complete taking of the guilt, and so the curse from before the face of God, according to other scriptures: 'He hath made him to be sin, and accursed of God for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... his lesson aloud, each seeking to drown out the confusion by the force of his voice. Many of our church schools of the present day remind one of this ancient method. The church building being planned primarily for adults, not enough classrooms are provided for the children, and it is a common thing to find half a dozen classes grouped in the one room, each constantly distracted by the sights and sounds that so insistently appeal to the senses. It is wholly ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme. For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... perhaps the most marked characteristic of Caucasian proverbs. Wit, wisdom and grace may all occasionally be dispensed with, but pictorial effect, the possibility of clear mental presentation, is a sine qua non. Aiming primarily at this, the mountaineer says of an impudent man, "He has as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... was primarily a scheme of torture for Happy Jack, Weary was anxious that it should be technically perfect. He became impatient. "Say, don't stand there like a kink-necked horse, Happy!" he implored under his breath. "Ain't there ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... are waiting outside the straits for the special pilot boats of the Turkish Government, in order to pass in safety through the dangerous mine field. This measure of closing the straits was suggested to Turkey by Austria and Germany, and was primarily intended against Russia, as it was feared that her Black Sea fleet might force its way into the Sea of Marmora and ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... young republic failed of realization, owing primarily and chiefly, I think, to the potent influence upon the institution of slavery of certain labor-saving inventions and their industrial application in England and America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. These epoch-making inventions were ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... vast deal of useful and often fascinating information.... An eminently readable volume, which, although designed primarily for the lay reader, has already elicited hearty commendation from not a few leaders of the profession.... American lawyers are beginning to see that much may be learned from modern English practice.... On the subject of the ethics of the English bar Mr. Leaming has much to say that is worth ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN. When its object is happy IT is happy—and that is what it is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the Bessemer process for making steel was intended primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa under commercial ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... satisfactory manner over a field so immense our lawfully ambitious aim was, as we realized at the outset, not possible to any two men who are primarily engaged, as we are, in other work of an exacting nature. Therefore, to render feasible the execution of our undertaking, we decided to invite the collaboration of many scholars and specialists, each of whom could, out of the fullness of information, speak with authority on some particular phase ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel. It does not expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the tongues of men. The world will be glad if you are all of these, of course; but it wants ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... Readers are to be found extracts from larger works. These extracts are placed there primarily because they have some special literary value. They have fairly complete unity in themselves and can be treated in detail in a way that would be impossible with a whole story. The extract has an advantage over the whole, in that it repays intensive ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... you see, is primarily an industrial affair, a method of covering men in from the rain, and admitting light into their protected interiors, and of warming those interiors, and in a few rare cases of ventilating them, and in providing a variety of ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... this saga-telling period has been attested in numerous ways from foreign records. Thus Snorri Sturlason's "The Sagas of the Kings of Norway," one of the great history books of the world, written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, was based primarily on early tradition, brought over the sea to Iceland. Yet the exactness of its descriptions and the reliability of its statements have been verified in countless cases by ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... members in the Hospitallers, who were primarily distinguished from each other by their birth, and who were allotted different functions in the Order. The Knights of Justice[1] were the highest class of the three and were the only Knights qualified for the Order's highest distinctions. Each langue had its own regulations for admitting ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen

... the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and that men, women and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... are written primarily for K., it is true, but they are meant also to let our own people know what their brothers and sons are up against and how they are bearing up under unheard of trials. There is not a word in those cables which would help or encourage ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... knights for the shire, but letters have been sent from divers estates to the great nobles of the county, the which enforceth their tenants and other people by force to choose other persons than the common will is." It was primarily to check this abuse that a statute of the reign of Henry the Sixth restricted in 1430 the right of voting in shires to freeholders holding land worth forty shillings, a sum equal in our money to at least twenty pounds a year and representing a far higher proportional income at the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... the little actress's behavior with a good measure of precision. Her restlessness, her chattering, the high, unpleasing pitch of her naturally lovely low voice, her assumption of the manner and speech of the blase young person of the stage, he saw to be primarily the cover of nervousness. He understood that the girl was troubled about something, was perhaps suffering, and tried to conceal it in this way. Moreover, he felt that, whatever it was, she was bearing it altogether alone, hiding it ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... are merged in the all-absorbing memory of almost uninterrupted ill-health, caused primarily, no doubt, by the state of the London climate at that season of the year, which is notorious all over the world. I had a perpetual cold, and I therefore followed the advice of my friends to take a heavy English diet ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... implies a misconception. Human development is not a material thing but is poetic and exalted. It has to do not merely with physical conditions but primarily with spiritual ideals. Let us observe more closely how Browning wakes Pippa up. When she comes to consciousness she utters a cry ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... speedily went on to ask Tai-yue to choose. Tai-yue likewise concedingly yielded her turn in favour of madame Wang and the other seniors, to make their selections before her, but the old lady expostulated. "To-day," she said, "is primarily an occasion, on which I've brought all of you here for your special recreation; and we had better look after our own selves and not heed them! For have I, do you imagine, gone to the trouble of having a performance and laying a feast for their special benefit? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... United States in 1902 was primarily to attend the christening of the racing yacht of the Emperor which was being built in this country. One of the members of his suite was von Tirpitz, then secretary of state of the German Navy. After having ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... secret and open, were exceedingly active. "That these societies," Washington observed, "were instituted by the artful and designing members (many of their body, I have no doubt, mean well, but know little of the real plan), primarily to sow among the people the seeds of jealousy and distrust of the government, by destroying all confidence in the administration of it, and that these doctrines have been budding and blowing ever since, is not new to any one who is acquainted with the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... under the 'mundium' of some one. You should understand this word 'mund.' Among most of the Teutonic races, women, slaves, and youths, at least not of age to carry arms, were under the mund of some one. Of course, primarily the father, head of the family, and if he died, an uncle, elder brother, &c. The married woman was, of course, under the mund of her husband. He was answerable for the good conduct of all under his mund; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... kingdom; why not again? I might have asked him, why at all, or why at his expense; but his lead was irresistible. Captain DeWitt and his valet, and I, and a score of ladies, scores of tradesmen, were rushing, reluctant or not, on a torrent. My part was to show that I was an athlete, and primarily that I could fence and shoot. 'It will do no harm to let it be known,' said DeWitt. He sat writing letters incessantly. My father made the tour of his fair stewardesses from noon to three, after receiving in audience his jewellers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... had brought about realization in this instance was humorous in the eyes of two-thirds of South Harniss's population. They were chuckling over it yet. The majority of the remaining third were shocked. Albert, who was primarily responsible for the whole affair, was neither amused nor shocked; he was angry ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... time distinctly feminine, with the gift of as much talk about who should pour tea as about how to storm a redoubt. She did not carry her mental wares on her sleeve. She flashed them in a way that prompted curiosity as to the next exhibit. He had sought primarily, selfishly, to be entertained at tea, and he was being entertained. To want to win was his nature. He understood, too, that she wanted to win. He liked that quality in her the more because it heightened the valve of victory ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... suggested Ronador stiffly, when the formalities of presentation were at an end. He glanced at the luminous turban and thence to the chains. Carl, though he had primarily intended the singular rig for the eyes of Tregar, had subtly invited the remark. His eyes were ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... unreasonable phenomenon. All such courts as that of Charles at Blois, or his friend Rene's in Provence, would soon be made impossible; interference was the order of the day; hunting was already abolished; and who should say what was to go next? Louis, in fact, must have appeared to Charles primarily in the light of a kill-joy. I take it, when missionaries land in South Sea Islands and lay strange embargo on the simplest things in life, the islanders will not be much more puzzled and irritated than Charles of Orleans at the policy of the Eleventh Louis. There ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... treat accurately and unconfusedly of vision, we must bear in mind that there are two sorts of objects apprehended by the eye, the one primarily and immediately, the other secondarily and by intervention of the former. Those of the first sort neither are, nor appear to be, without the mind, or at any distance off; they may indeed grow greater ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... far as Henry VIII. was concerned, was not in essence doctrinal; neither was it primarily a schism between the English and Roman communions. It was rather an episode in the eternal dispute between Church and State. Throughout the quarrel, Henry and Elizabeth maintained that they were merely reasserting ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... complete and he is free to enter his wife's house, which he might not do before.[336] This account of the purification of a homicide suggests that the purificatory rites, which have been observed in similar cases by many peoples, including the ancient Greeks, are primarily intended to free the slayer from the dangerous ghost of his victim, which haunts him and seeks to take his life. Such rites in fact appear designed, not to restore the homicide to a state of moral innocence, but merely to guard him against a physical danger; they are protective, not ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... of the prophet. That event marks the commencement of the Mahometan era, which is called there-from the Hegira. According to the civil calculation it is fixed at Friday, July 16th, the date of the Mahometans, although astronomers and some historians assign it to the day preceding. While primarily referring to the flight of Mahomet, the term is applied also to the emigration to Medina, prior to the capture of Mecca (630) of those of Mahomet's disciples, who henceforth were known as Mohajerins—Emigrants or Refugees—which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... that the complete defeat of the German plans was due primarily to three things: "(1) the dogged steadfastness of the British and the patient heroism of the French soldiers and civilians; (2) the brilliant strategy of General Foch, and the unity of command which made this effective; (3) the material and moral encouragement of the American ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... piece of writing, well in keeping with the character of an author whose habit of viewing an action from the most dangerous, because the most interesting, point can be discovered only by reading between the lines, primarily it is to be prescribed as a sovereign tonic against German-made depression. The writer, after being present at the conquest of Galicia and the triumphant advance to the top of the Carpathians, after witnessing much of the historical Russian retreat under ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... contributing cause," Dr. Sunderland acknowledged, "but the child's condition is primarily responsible. Let her alone until she rouses,—then give her hot water with a pinch of soda in it at fifteen-minute intervals. Keep her feet hot and her head cold and don't try to move her until ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... nominatives or antecedents, are sometimes taken conjointly when there is no conjunction expressed; as, "The historian, the orator, the philosopher, address themselves primarily to the understanding: their direct aim is, to inform, to persuade, to instruct."—Blair's Rhet., p. 377. The copulative and may here be said to be understood, because the verb and the pronouns are plural; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... agitation was suddenly thrust the application of Missouri for entrance into the Union as a slave state. The struggle that followed for two years was primarily a political one, but in the course of the discussion the evils of slavery were fully considered. Meanwhile, in 1819, Alabama and Maine also applied for admission. Alabama was allowed to enter without much discussion, as she made equal the number of slave and free states. Maine, however, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... of the Rossinian school, in which the feeling of the theme is expressed in a dazzling parade of roulades and fioriture, the songs in which Rubini was matchless. But in those songs where music tells the story of passion in broad, intelligible, ardent phrases, and presents itself primarily as the vehicle of vehement emotion, Mario stood ahead of all others of his age, it may be said, indeed, of all within the memory of his age. It was for this reason that he attained such a supremacy also on the concert stage. The choicest songs of Schubert, ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... ground that all the natural divisions in the animal kingdom are primarily distinct, founded upon different categories of characters, and that all exist in the same way, that is, as categories of thought, embodied in individual living forms. I have attempted to show that branches ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... that Hawkes had taken him in primarily because he fit the qualifications for a plan concocted long before, and not for his own sake. All the intensive training the gambler had given him had been directed not merely toward toughening Alan but toward preparing him for the role he would ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... again, regretting to leave nothing except the kind disposition of Mrs. Honey, our housekeeper. I do not remember meeting with any other lodging-house keeper who did not grow hateful and fearful on short acquaintance; but I attribute this, not so much to the people themselves, as, primarily, to the unfair and ungenerous conduct of some of their English guests, who feel so sure of being cheated that they always behave as if in an enemy's country, and therefore they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which separated the ordinances of Nature from the gross ingredients with which they were mingled was a sense of simplicity and harmony; yet it was not on account of their simplicity and harmony that these finer elements were primarily respected, but on the score of their descent from the aboriginal reign of Nature. This confusion has not been successfully explained away by the modern disciples of the jurisconsults, and in truth modern speculations on the Law of Nature betray much ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... from Ital. bagatella, bagata, a trifle), primarily a thing of trifling importance. The name, though French, is given to a game which is probably of English origin, though its connexion with the shovel-board of Cotton's Complete Gamester is very doubtful. Strutt does not mention it. The game is very likely a modification of billiards, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... which was now therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed; and, besides, they were politicians ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... lime-light a brilliant development of this new drama through the Chapel Royal, a development that took place primarily under the direction of the great musicians who served as masters of the children of the Chapel and as court entertainers, the first true poets-laureate, through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... yearningly invited?—so that one positively had her possible susceptibilities the MORE on one's conscience. The Miss Lutches, the sisters from the middle West, were there as friends of Maggie's, friends of the earlier time; but Mrs. Rance was there—or at least had primarily appeared—only as a ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... from the heroic legends, which at the same time were legends of the gods in so far as they were interwoven with tales of the gods' direct intervention in affairs. It is precisely against this intervention that the criticism of Euripides is primarily directed. Again and again he makes his characters protest against the manner in which they are treated by the gods or in which the gods generally behave. It is characteristic of Euripides that his starting-point ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... and the other original heralds of the gospel, sought primarily the conversion of unbelievers. The commission given to Paul points out distinctly the grand design of their ministry. When the great persecutor of the saints was himself converted on his way to Damascus, our Lord addressed to him the memorable words—"I have ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... sufferings and triumphs of the righteous remnant (Isa. liii., Ezek. xxxvi.-xxxvii.). By the strong emphasis upon righteousness, the tribal Lord of Israel was revealed as the universal God, of one relationship to all men. This monotheism was not primarily cosmological nor metaphysical, but ethical. The Jews showed little capacity for abstract reasoning and never pursued their inquiries to the discovery of ultimate principles. Thus they did not develop a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... the indisputably eighth-century French writing which covers the ancient texts. The student of Latin literature knows that the manuscript tradition of Lucretius, Suetonius, Caesar, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius—to mention only the greatest names—shows that we are indebted primarily to Gallia Christiana for the ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... I own puzzled me till yesterday: some metaphysicians would seat the moral sense inherently in the heart, others would place it intuitively in the brain, all would confine it to the soul; now in my opinion it resides primarily and principally in the nerves, and varies with their variations. Hence the difficulty of making the moral sense a universal guide of action, since it not only differs in many individuals, but in the same persons ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... basis of my remarks this collective American edition, I will here attempt a rude general classification of all the articles which compose it. I distribute them grossly into three classes: First, into that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader; but which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest. Some papers are merely playful; but others have a mixed character. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... same moment. But just as all lines are parallel in infinity, so all actions are profoundly consistent when referred to the infinitely broad standard of the necessity that every living thing shall look primarily to its own well being. Disobedience to this fundamental carries with it inevitable punishment of disintegration and death; and those catastrophes are serious matters when one has but the single chance at life, that will be repeated never again ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... only by the way, the poem being primarily on physics. Pleasure is the end of action: ii. 172, 'dux vitae dia voluptas.' This pleasure is the absence of disturbance (ataraxia), hence all passion (as of love, iv. 1121-40) is ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... his reason and imagination was owing to the wider scope and increased energy of the great moving forces of his being. It relates primarily to the heart rather than the head. It is the immense fiery force behind his mental powers, kindling them into white heat, and urging them to efforts almost preternatural,—it is this which impels the daring thought beyond the limits of positive knowledge, and prompts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... society, and of the way of industrial progress. In one the social importance of a high level of production predominates, and the wage earner is argued about merely as part of a productive organization. In the other, the wage earner is viewed primarily as a member of an occupational group or class, whose wages should be regulated by the standard of life of his group or class, rather than by strict measurement of his own individual capacity. This conflict is revealed, as R. F. Hoxie pointed ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... task of selecting a successor to Harvey. Their unanimous vote was given to Captain Francis West, the senior member of the board and formerly Governor. Feeling that since the expulsion of Harvey had been primarily a movement to protect the rights of the people, the Burgesses should have some voice in the election of the new Governor, they appealed to the Assembly for the ratification of their choice. West was popular in the colony, and "the people's suffrages" were cast for him as willingly ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... was supposed to be honest. A single look of that heavenly countenance, and two words of gentle command, were enough for him. Neither of these men, the early disciple, nor the evangelist, seems to have been thinking primarily about ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... primarily produced in a steam engine is a reciprocating or alternate motion of the piston from end to end of the cylinder; but the motion which is necessary to be produced for the purposes to which the engine is applied, is rarely or never of this nature. This primary motion, therefore, is almost always ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various

... an insurance man—and by that is meant primarily a fire insurance man—is in New England no mean or casual thing. South, West, in the newer and more open lands, where traditions are fewer and there is less time for the dignities and observance of the amenities of commerce, fire insurance takes its chance with a thousand other roads to ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... estates. Hastings's conduct in withdrawing the guarantee was not without justification ; the means which he suffered to be employed in carrying out his purpose, and for the employment of which he must be held primarily responsible, were utterly ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... ages,—through growths, griefs, desires, processes, spheres,—to travel the endless highways,—to pass and resume again. O Heavens, you are but a splendid fable of the elder mind! Centripetal and centrifugal are in man, too, and primarily; and an aspiring soul will ascend into the sweeps and circles, and pass swift and devouring through baffling intervals and steep-down strata ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... old. The second biggest event was getting a watch—which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen. It was intended primarily for driving threshing machines and sawmills and was simply a portable engine and boiler mounted on wheels with a water tank and coal cart trailing behind. I had seen plenty of these engines hauled around by horses, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... is not primarily with a view to the improvement of administration, that this measure is put forward, it is chiefly desirable as an instrument of political and ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... lay a solid basis upon which Bok had only to build: his task was simply to rear a structure upon the foundation already laid. It is to the vision and to the genius of the first editor of The Ladies' Home Journal that the unprecedented success of the magazine is primarily due. It was the purpose and the policy of making a magazine of authoritative service for the womanhood of America, a service which would visualize for womanhood its highest domestic estate, that had won success for the periodical from its inception. It is ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... reason, though reasoning is only one of their mental processes. The rules for valid reasoning laid down by the Greeks were intended primarily for use in politics, but in politics reasoning has in fact proved to be more difficult and less successful than in the physical sciences. The chief cause of this is to be found in the character of its material. We have to select or create entities to reason about, just as we select ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... invisible) hemisphere of the Moon, or as may proceed from the Sun's Corona (to be described presently). The condition of things therefore is that known as a "total" eclipse of the Sun so far as regards the inhabitants of the narrow strip of Earth primarily affected. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... primarily, on your power of representing Roundness. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... public policy is guided primarily by considerations of business expediency, and the administration, as well as the legislative power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosen avowedly on the ground of their businesslike principles and ability. There is no power in such a community that can over-rule the exigencies of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... accident; just as the Red-blood may reflect, but reflects by accident. The Mollycoddle in action is the Crank: it is he who accomplishes reforms; who abolished slavery, for example, and revolutionised prisons and lunatic asylums. Still, primarily, the Mollycoddle is a critic, not a man of action. He challenges all standards and all facts. If an institution is established, that is a reason why he will not accept it; if an idea is current, that is a reason why he should repudiate it. He ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... relationship, yet there is but one step between them, avus, avunculus, uncle. So pilgrim, from ager: per agrum, peragrinus, peregrinus, pellegrino, pilgrim. Professor Bain gives some apt examples of these transitions of meaning. "The word 'damp' primarily signified moist, humid, wet. But the property is often accompanied with the feeling of cold or chilliness, and hence the idea of cold is strongly suggested by the word. This is not all. Proceeding upon the superadded meaning, we speak of damping a man's ardor, a ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... intensely for what it all means, I loathe so deeply the motives that seem at work. I suppose that the ordinary man considers a species of success, a bettering of himself, the acquisition of money and position and respectability, to be the end of life; and such as these look upon education primarily as a means of arriving at their object. Such was the old education given by the sophists, which aimed at turning out a well-balanced, effective man. But all this, it seems to me, has the wrong end in view. The success of it depends upon the fact that every one is ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... promote the intelligent study of government by supplying working descriptions of the governmental systems of the various countries of western and central Europe as they have taken form and as they operate at the present day. Conceived and prepared primarily as a text for use in college courses, it is hoped none the less that the volume may prove of service to persons everywhere whose interest in the subject leads them to seek the sort of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Expedition would be primarily to search for traces of Dr. Leichhardt and his party, who started from the settled districts of New South Wales in April, 1848, with the intention of proceeding to Western Australia, and, if possible, to ascertain the fate of that unfortunate explorer. Secondly, the examination of the ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... see that in the solid and fluid excrements of man and animals, all the nitrogen—in short, all the constituent ingredients of the consumed food, soluble and insoluble, are returned; and as food is primarily derived from the fields, we possess in those excrements all the ingredients which we have taken from it in the form ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... inspiring spirit of all his publications, and I should think the papers which he controls convey their message, good, bad, or indifferent, to not less than six millions of people every day. The range of his influence is obvious, and though it is an influence primarily of the middle classes, it reacts upward and downward, and makes itself felt even on those who dislike his policies. Northcliffe is undoubtedly patriotic and is sincere, but he is, above all other things, a newspaper man. The huge circulations of his papers tell their story of his mind. He is ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... was for some hours in an apparently critical condition, at times hardly able to breathe and unable to take the restoratives administered by his physicians. His condition was pronounced one of simple cerebral depression, produced primarily by great mental strain, and, secondarily, by the action of excessive heat. There was no apoplectic congestion or effusion, nor ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... by implication, make other persons tell EACH OTHER about him—blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they were primarily HIS persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had simply nothing to do. I had relations for him none the less, by the mercy of Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could only by implication and a show of consequence make other persons ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... on, the burglar began to be conscious that it was but a shallow well of information and amusement that he pumped. The game, fascinating with its spice of daring as it had primarily been, began to pall. At length the masquerader calculated the hour as ripe for what he had contemplated from the beginning; and interrupted Hickey with scant consideration, in the middle of a ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... prophecy, with a solemn and awful sanction. These tremendous threatenings by the "Lord God of the holy prophets," may well cause all who read or hear to tremble: for who can abide his indignation?—While the "prophecy of this book" is primarily intended, all other parts of the Bible are included in this solemn conclusion: for doubtless our Lord intended the Apocalypse to be a close to the whole canon. The threatening is twofold, corresponding to the criminality. Learned, bold and irreverent ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... his interest in physiological experimental research, Dr. Beyer enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded a Ph. D. degree in 1887. Unlike his predecessor, Dr. Beyer was primarily interested in carrying on research on the physiological action of certain drugs and in pharmacology. This was evident from the original scientific papers mentioned in the Smithsonian Annual Reports ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh

... he forgets the printed page, the better does it accomplish its literary purpose. It is probably an instinctive appreciation of this fact which has led so many latter-day writers to narrate their short-stories in dialect. In a story which is communicated by the living voice our attention is held primarily not by the excellent deposition of adjectives and poise of style, but by the striding progress of the plot; it is the plot, and action in the plot, alone which we remember when the combination ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... JOSEPH. Talking to the Moon, University of Chicago Press, 1945. A wise and spiritual interpretation of the black-jack country of eastern Oklahoma, close to the Osages, in which John Joseph Mathews lives. Not primarily about coyotes, the book illuminates them more than numerous books on particular animals illuminate ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... sound common-sense and fluent wit were the Laureate's staple qualities. If his comedies have not, like those of his contemporaries just named, enjoyed the good-fortune to be collected and preserved among the dramatic classics, the fact is primarily owing to the ephemeral interest of the hits and allusions, and secondarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of legislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, but a matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expert reading and interpretation of the minds of men. What are they thinking about? What do they think ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... primarily interested in the technique of agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young and Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone of a healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close acquaintance with the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... in letting anything on a farm get into lazy habits. A hen is primarily intended to lay eggs. I send them back to work when they have hatched ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... and, in fact, really forming a branch of the last, we find the great group of storage-tissues, the granaries or bankers of the body-politic, distinguished primarily, like the capitalist class elsewhere, by an inordinate appetite, not to say greed. They sweep into their interior all the food-materials which are not absolutely necessary for the performance of the vital function of the other cells. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... which the intellect understands. But since the intellect reflects upon itself, by such reflection it understands both its own act of intelligence, and the species by which it understands. Thus the intelligible species is that which is understood secondarily; but that which is primarily understood is the object, of which the species is the likeness. This also appears from the opinion of the ancient philosophers, who said that "like is known by like." For they said that the soul knows the earth outside itself, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... impulse must be confined and regulated. 3. That of parent and child, which is consequential to that of marriage, being it's principal end and design: and it is by virtue of this relation that infants are protected, maintained, and educated. But, since the parents, on whom this care is primarily incumbent, may be snatched away by death or otherwise, before they have completed their duty, the law has therefore provided a fourth relation; 4. That of guardian and ward, which is a kind of artificial ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... Knell," where the contrast goes back to lost youth for effect. In the very artificial fable, which has elements of the fairy story in it, "The Three-fold Destiny," there is this simple construction, and it is found also in "The Prophetic Pictures," though that tale is primarily a study in the idea of fate, a subject seldom touched by Hawthorne, the notion of an inevitable destiny foreseen by the painter's intuition and forecast on the canvas, but implicit from the beginning in character. In all these tales scene, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... also know that Steve's agency is primarily concerned with protecting military secrets," Zircon added. "I agree with Rick. We must get word of these mysterious ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... motive that prompted these men to take the project under their protection, the Queen was primarily swayed by religious arguments, which also with Columbus were as powerfully operative as his desire ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Although education is primarily a responsibility of the States and local communities, and rightly so, yet the Nation as a whole is vitally concerned in its development everywhere to the highest standards and to complete universality. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... "J" battery is an extremely heavy construction battery with thick plates, and it was designed primarily for use on trucks and other vehicles of this type where there is excessive vibration and other possibility of mechanical abuse. This battery will give a greater life than either the "H", "C" or "B" battery ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... Now this Good is primarily and essentially compared to the Divine will, as its proper object. Again, that which is first in any genus is the measure and rule of all that belongs to that genus. Moreover, everything attains to rectitude and goodness, in so far as it is in accord with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... is one other inference to be drawn from what I conceive to be the Anglican position, and that is one that relates, not primarily to doctrine but to practice. For many years now the Anglican Churches have been greatly disturbed by varieties of practice, though it is difficult to see why varieties of practice should be in themselves ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... the provisions. of the "new law," which is described to be a radical change from the old one on the same subject. While conceding to the Minister of War in Paris the general control and supervision of the entire military establishment primarily, especially of the annual estimates or budget, and the great depots of supply, it distributes to the commanders of the corps d'armee in time of peace, and to all army commanders generally in time ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent nation. The State was near and palpable; the central government seemed a vague and distant thing. Loyalty was conceived as binding one primarily to one's own State. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... the women are the great upholders of polygamy, which not only provides for their surplus numbers but gives greater importance to the first wife, who is thus practically the head of several households. Marriage is looked upon as primarily a civil contract, and, subject to certain conditions and to a proper provision for children, is dissoluble at the will of both contracting parties, the divorce, or 'unloosing', being formally and ceremoniously ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... with etymology, if we agree to mean by asceticism or ascesis, the athlete quality of self-discipline, controlling, by no means necessarily for indefinitely prolonged periods, the gratification of the sexual impulse. By chastity, which is primarily the quality of purity, and secondarily that of holiness, rather than of abstinence, we may best understand a due proportion between erotic claims and the other claims of life. "Chastity," as Ellen Key well says, "is harmony between body and soul in relation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Indian beliefs about Karma and rebirth and with them the usual conclusion that release from the series of rebirths is the summum bonum. This deliverance he called saintship (arahattam) or nirvana of which I shall say something below. In early Buddhism it is primarily a state of happiness to be attained in this life and the Buddha persistently refused to explain what is the nature of a saint after death. The question is unprofitable and perhaps he would have said, had he spoken our language, unmeaning. Later generations did not hesitate ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... them must for the nonce become a theorist, and argue from the known to the unknown; and, first, the practical man will turn—secretly perhaps, but wisely—to the invaluable experiments and laws laid down so clearly by the late Mr. Froude. Although primarily designed to assist the Admiralty in arguing from the resistance of a model to that of the full size vessel, the practical man need not thereby despise Froude's laws, as he is able to choose his mode: to any scale he likes, and he can take his experiments ready made by practice on a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various



Words linked to "Primarily" :   primary, in the main, mainly



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org