primary school
Americannoun
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a school usually covering the first three or four years of elementary school and sometimes kindergarten.
noun
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(in Britain) a school for children below the age of 11. It is usually divided into an infant and a junior section
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(in the US and Canada) a school equivalent to the first three or four grades of elementary school, sometimes including a kindergarten
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of primary school
First recorded in 1795–1805
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Three-fourths of school-going children couldn’t read or understand a simple story by the end of primary school.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 17, 2026
Nine children have been taken to hospital after eating seeds from trees at a primary school in Nottinghamshire.
From BBC • Jun. 4, 2026
One of the new teachers at the primary school this year, Joseph Brown, trained through the academy trust's scheme after working as a teaching assistant.
From BBC • Jun. 4, 2026
When the children moved from Baden Powell to Nightingale, they joined their new classmates in their very modern primary school building, which has a climbing wall, cookery and art rooms, and a rooftop sensory garden.
From BBC • Jun. 1, 2026
Pulling up to the Whitgift School on the first of the two days of competition, I decided the school looked more like a prestigious college campus than any primary school I’d ever seen before.
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
