secondary

Pluralsecondaries

1. 1
   adjective

   Coming next after the first or primary; of second place in order, origin, or rank.

   We took the secondary route to avoid traffic on the main road.

   In the company hierarchy, his secondary role supported the lead manager.

   Similarsubordinate, subsidiary, lesser, minor, auxiliary

   Oppositeprimary, main, principal, chief

   Note

   The core meaning of the whole word comes from Middle English secundarie, from Latin secundārius, "of the second class or quality." That is built on secundus, the same word that gives English second. The pairing with primary runs through nearly every technical use that follows, from the chemist's term to the transformer coil. So the word usually implies a first thing that it stands behind.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having less than primary importance; minor or subordinate compared with what matters most.

   Profit remained a secondary consideration behind the company's mission.

   For now, decorating the office is a secondary priority.

   Similarminor, lesser, subordinate, subsidiary, peripheral

   Oppositeprimary, main, principal, chief

   Note

   The everyday sense of rank by importance is also the one that bends grammar. The word is usually treated as absolute, yet in practice it takes degrees. Deborah Bernstein's Pioneers and Homemakers (1992) says sexual equality became "even more secondary than before." More secondary and most secondary are available when the point is a slide down a scale of priority.

3. 3
   adjective

   Relating to education for students between roughly 11 and 18 years of age.

   Many secondary students choose elective subjects in their final years.

   He teaches science at a large secondary school.

   Note

   The middle rung of a three-step ladder: primary, secondary, tertiary. It names the stage between the early school years and university or college. It occurs mostly in fixed pairings such as secondary school, secondary education, and secondary teacher. The school itself can also be called a secondary, with no noun needed.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A school providing education for students roughly between 11 and 18 years of age.

   He taught for thirty years at a rural secondary.

   The new secondary opened with room for a thousand students.

   Note

   The school noun is a clipping of secondary school, and it forms its plural regularly, as in four secondaries in one district. It covers the same years as the educational adjective. In most contexts it stands in for the full phrase without any change of meaning.

5. 5
   adjective

   Of a color, formed by mixing two primary colors.

   Painters mix red and yellow to make a secondary orange.

   The chart grouped every secondary color beside its parent primaries.

   Note

   Yellow is a secondary color in light but a primary one in CMYK ink. What counts as secondary depends on which colors a system starts from as primaries. Mixing light and mixing pigment begin from different primaries, so the same hue can fall on either side of the line. The bare noun a secondary is the shortened form of the phrase.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   Something of lesser importance than the main or primary thing.

   In planning the trip, sightseeing was the priority and shopping a mere secondary.

   Every other concern became a secondary once the deadline loomed.

   Similarafterthought

   Oppositepriority

7. 7
   nounUKabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of secondary colour.

   Artists often dull a secondary by adding a touch of its complement.

   Purple is the secondary you get from red and blue.

   Note

   A color-wheel shorthand: the adjective drops its noun and stands for the whole phrase secondary color, one of the three hues made by mixing two primaries. It takes the regular plural secondaries, and it reads most naturally where color is already the subject, as in the primaries and secondaries of a palette. Elsewhere, write out the full phrase, or the reader may hear anything of lesser importance instead.

8. 8
   adjective

   Concerned with turning raw materials into finished products.

   The country's secondary industries expanded as factories multiplied.

   Workers shifted from farming into secondary manufacturing jobs.

   Note

   Economists' three-sector model puts manufacturing in the middle. The primary sector extracts raw materials, the secondary turns them into goods, and the tertiary provides services. The word appears mostly in fixed phrases such as secondary industry and the secondary sector. Do not read it as "minor" here: a country's secondary sector may well be its largest.

9. 9
   adjective

   Of a condition, arising as a consequence of another disease, or occurring in its second stage.

   Patients with diabetes may develop secondary complications affecting the eyes.

   The rash signaled the secondary stage of the infection.

   Oppositeidiopathic

   Note

   In clinical writing it usually takes to, and the cause follows the preposition: Bright's disease is often secondary to scarlet fever. Its other use marks a stage rather than a cause, as in the secondary symptoms of syphilis. A pointed antonym is idiopathic, the word for a condition that arises on its own with no prior disease behind it.

   Bright's disease is often secondary to scarlet fever.

   The patient's kidney damage was judged secondary to long-standing diabetes.

10. 10
    adjective

    Derived from someone acting as a deputy, or from a person or body to whom authority has been delegated.

    The committee held secondary authority delegated by the full council.

    The regulations carry only secondary force, derived from the minister's delegated powers.

    Similarderived, derivative, subordinate

    Oppositeprimary, original

    Note

    Here the stress falls on who produced something, not on where it ranks. "The work of secondary hands" is work done by assistants or agents rather than by the principal. The word marks something as derived, at one remove from its true author or authority. Its human counterpart is the deputy, the secondary whose hands those are.

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