priority

English

Etymology

From Old French priorite, from Latin prioritas.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɹaɪˈɒɹɨti/
• enPR: prī-ôrʹĭ-tē, IPA^(key): /pɹaɪˈɔɹɪ̈ti/
• Rhymes: -ɒɹɪti
• Hyphenation: pri‧or‧i‧ty

Noun

priority (countable and uncountable, plural priorities)

1. An item's relative importance.

   He set his e-mail message's priority to high.

2. A goal of a person or an organisation.

   She needs to get her priorities straight and stop playing games.

3. The quality of being earlier or coming first compared to another thing; the state of being prior.

   In bankruptcy law, a business' debt to its employees has priority over its debt to a landlord, so the employees must be paid first.

   • 2020 January 2, Graeme Pickering, “Fuelling the changes on Teesside rails”, in Rail, page 59:

     But it's now platform extension work which will allow the station to handle LNER Azuma trains which needs to take priority, if a direct service to London King's Cross is to begin in 2021.

4. (taxonomy, of a name) A superior claim to use by virtue of being validly published at an earlier date.
   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page viii:

     Neither [Jones] […] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority."

5. (obsolete) Precedence; superior rank.
   • 1608, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, I. i. 244:

     Follow Cominius. We must follow you. / Right worthy you priority.

Derived terms

• aperture priority
• prioritise / prioritize
• prioritization
• shutter priority
• top priority

 

Translations

item's relative importance

• Arabic: أَوَّلَِيَّة f (ʔawwalaiyya), أَوْلَوِيَّة f (ʔawlawiyya)
• Catalan: prioritat f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 優先權／优先权 (yōuxiānquán), 优先权 (yōuxiānquán), 更重要的事 (gèng zhòngyào de shì)

• Czech: priorita f
• Danish: prioritet c
• Dutch: voorrang (nl)
• Esperanto: prioritato (eo)
• Finnish: prioriteetti (fi), tärkeys (fi)
• French: priorité (fr) f
• German: Priorität (de) f
• Greek: προτεραιότητα (el) f (proteraiótita)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: priorità (it)
• Japanese: 優先 (ja) (ゆうせん, yūsen), 優先権 (ゆうせんけん, yūsenken)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: prioritet m

  Nynorsk: prioritet m

• Polish: priorytet (pl) m
• Portuguese: prioridade (pt) f, prioridades f pl
• Romanian: prioritate (ro), întâietate (ro) f
• Russian: приорите́т (ru) m (prioritét)
• Spanish: prioridad (es) f
• Swedish: prioritet (sv) c, förtur c, företräde (sv) n

goal of a person or an organisation

• Arabic: أَوَّلَِيَّة f (ʔawwalaiyya), أَوْلَوِيَّة f (ʔawlawiyya)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 目的 (zh) (mùdì)

• Czech: priorita f
• Danish: prioritet c
• Egyptian Arabic: اولوية f (awlawiyya)
• Esperanto: prioritato (eo)
• Finnish: tärkeysjärjestys (fi), tavoite (fi)
• French: priorité (fr) f
• German: Priorität (de) f
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Greek: προτεραιότητα (el) f (proteraiótita)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: prioritet m

  Nynorsk: prioritet m

• Polish: priorytet (pl) m
• Portuguese: prioridade (pt) f, prioridades f pl
• Romanian: prioritate (ro) f
• Spanish: prioridad (es) f
• Swedish: prioritering (sv) c, prioritet (sv) c, fokus (sv) n

attributive use — see prioritized