primaried

1. 1
   verbUS

   Simple past and past participle of primary.

   The incumbent was primaried by an insurgent from his own party.

   Several moderate lawmakers got primaried during the wave of partisan upsets.

   Note

   A participle that usually turns up in the passive, with the challenged incumbent as its subject: she was primaried, he got primaried. It is US political vocabulary. The challenge it names comes from inside the politician's own party, often from a more ideologically extreme rival. Do not confuse it with the ornithologist's adjective, which has the same spelling but describes birds' wing feathers.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a specified number or kind of primaries, the large flight feathers at the outer end of a bird's wing.

   Most songbirds are nine-primaried, having lost or shrunk the tenth outer feather.

   Long-primaried seabirds are built for gliding across open water.

   Note

   An ornithologist's combining form, which is never used alone. It attaches to a number or a descriptive word and is hyphenated: nine-primaried, long-primaried. The primaries grow from the manus, the "hand" of the wing. The phrase nine-primaried oscines names a major songbird grouping in which the tenth primary is reduced or lost. It is not comparable: a bird has its count of primaries, and one bird is not "more primaried" than another.

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