# elementary

Pronunciation: US say "el-uh-MEN-tuh-ree" /ˌɛləˈmɛntəɹi/; UK say "el-i-MEN-tuh-ree" /ˌɛlɪˈmɛntəɹi/

## Adjective

1. Very simple; requiring little thought, skill, or explanation.
   - Simple: Very simple and easy to understand or do.
   - _The detective dismissed the puzzle as elementary._
   - _Once you see the trick, the card game's strategy seems elementary._
2. Relating to elementary school, the first stage of formal schooling for children roughly five to eleven years old.
   - Simple: About the school grades for young children, usually from kindergarten to fifth grade.
   - _The district hired forty new elementary teachers this fall._
   - _Elementary classrooms tend to be more colorful than high-school ones._
3. Concerned with the first principles or most basic parts of a subject.
   - Simple: Dealing with the most basic and important parts of something.
   - _The handbook explains the elementary principles of contract law._
   - _An elementary grasp of grammar is enough to start writing simple sentences in Spanish._
4. Forming a basic component of something larger or more complex, such as a structure or process.
   - Simple: Being one of the basic building blocks that bigger or more complex things are made from.
   - _Chemists treat atoms as the elementary units from which molecules are assembled._
   - _Supply and demand are elementary forces in any market economy._
6. Of a subatomic particle, not composed of smaller constituents; serving as a basic building block of matter.
   - Simple: Describing the tiniest pieces of matter, which are not made of smaller parts.
   - _Quarks and electrons are elementary, while protons are built from smaller pieces._
   - _The Standard Model catalogs every known elementary particle._
7. Straightforward and using only basic techniques, without requiring substantial knowledge of a particular field.
   - Simple: Needing only basic skills or knowledge, not advanced training.
   - _Her argument is elementary, relying on nothing beyond high-school algebra._
   - _The manual assumes only an elementary familiarity with programming._
8. Of a chemical reaction or step: involving only a single reaction step and a single transition state.
   - Simple: Describing a chemical change that happens in one single step.
   - _The decomposition is elementary, proceeding through a single transition state._
   - _Kineticists break the overall mechanism into a chain of elementary steps._
9. Of a proof or method in number theory: making no use of complex analysis.
   - Simple: In math, proving facts about numbers without using advanced tools based on imaginary numbers.
   - _Selberg and Erdős stunned mathematicians with an elementary proof of the prime number theorem._
   - _For over a century, Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions resisted elementary methods._
10. Of a matrix: performing a single row or column operation on another matrix when the two are multiplied together.
   - Simple: Describing a number grid that changes one row or column of another grid when multiplied.
   - _Row reduction can be recorded as multiplication by a sequence of elementary matrices._
   - _Each elementary matrix comes from applying one row operation to the identity matrix._
11. Of a symmetric polynomial: belonging to the basic family that arises from Vieta's formulas, which connect a polynomial's coefficients to its roots.
   - Simple: Describing the most basic expressions that treat every variable in a group the same way.
   - _The elementary symmetric polynomials in x and y are x + y and xy._
   - _Vieta's formulas write a polynomial's coefficients, up to sign, as elementary symmetric polynomials of its roots._

## Noun

5. Ellipsis of elementary school. *(colloquial)* — Ellipsis of elementary school.
   - Simple: Short for elementary school. Use it in casual talk instead of saying the full name.
   - _Kids in elementary usually have just one teacher for most subjects._
   - _I haven't seen her since elementary._
12. A supernatural being associated with one of the classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water.
   - Simple: A magic spirit believed to live in fire, water, air, or earth.
   - _The medium claimed an elementary had attached itself to the old house._
   - _Folklore collected in the book describes elementaries haunting wells and hearths._

## Adjective

13. Belonging to the sublunary sphere to which the four classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) were confined, rather than to the celestial heavens; composed of or pertaining to the four elements. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: In old beliefs, belonging to our world of earth, air, fire, and water, not to the heavens.
   - _Medieval cosmology divided creation into the elementary world below the moon and the unchanging heavens above._
   - _Alchemists held that every elementary substance mixed the qualities of the four elements._

## Origin

From Middle English elementare, from Latin elementārius ("elementary"), formed from elementum ("one of the four elements of antiquity; fundamentals") plus the adjective-forming suffix -ārius. It is cognate with French élémentaire.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/elementary (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).