primo
Americannoun
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primos,
plural
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primi
plural
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the part of a piano duet played on the upper half of the keyboard.
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the first or leading part in an ensemble.
adjective
noun
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music the upper or right-hand part in a piano duet Compare secondo
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Also: primo tempo. at the same speed as at the beginning of the piece
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of primo
First recorded in 1785–95; from Italian: literally, “first,” from Latin prīmus; see prime
Vocabulary lists containing primo
Music - Middle School
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Music - High School
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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.
See Examples For:
The school year is barely a month old, but for college students hoping to land a primo internship next summer it might already be too late.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
It was a primo gig: Kelly got an hour of the Today show, a Sunday-night newsmagazine program, and a correspondent role during breaking news and political coverage.
From Slate ● May 6, 2026
It’s an extra $60 for the VIP upgrade, which comes with some kind of primo parking.
From Seattle Times ● May 25, 2024
To an Italian, they're completely incomprehensible, because pasta is a primo piatto, a first course, and meat is a secondo, and never the twain shall meet.
From Salon ● Jan. 4, 2023
Ever since kindergarten, the primo nerd, bar none, had been Hugh Winkleman.
From "Schooled" by Gordon Korman
The silky, beef-infused onion sauce gets spooned over the pasta primi course before the chuck roast arrives as the fall-apart main event.
From Salon ● Dec. 11, 2021
Antonio Pucci, in the eighty-fifth canto of his Centiloquio, distinctly states that Giotto carved the earlier ones, i primi intagli fe con bello stile, and Pucci was almost Giotto's contemporary.
From The Story of Florence by Edmund G. Gardner
Among the class of silly emblems, few books can vie with the Imago primi Soeculi Societatis Jesu.
From Priests, Women, and Families by Jules Michelet
Cassini, his son and his grandson were only primi inter pares.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 7 "Arundel, Thomas" to "Athens" by Various
At the end--just before the date, and the four colophonic verses of the printer--we read: "Finis primi ptis lecture dni Bartoli super ffto nouo."
From A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three by Thomas Frognall Dibdin
“My primos just went to one of the most prestigious festivals in Monaco and they won first place. I wanna be like my cousins and do what they’re doing.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Police say that after a co-ordinated effort between Colombian and British authorities, a criminal group called "los primos" was dismantled.
From BBC ● Nov. 11, 2023
“It’s a place where people call each other primos and parientes” — cousins and relatives — Garcia, 50, said.
From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2022
“There was a lot of misinformation being passed around on WhatsApp and that’s where the primos and tías were reading,” Montes said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2022
Robinson despised the old-fashioned Ethics and Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental Philosophy he was inter primos.
From Andrew Marvell by John Morley
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.
