dominant vs primary

dominant

adj
  • Being the dominant 

  • Predominant, common, prevalent, of greatest importance. 

  • Ruling; governing; prevailing 

  • Preferred and used with greater dexterity than the other, as the right hand of a right-handed person or the left hand of a left-handed one. 

  • Designating the follicle which will survive atresia and permit ovulation. 

noun
  • The fifth major tone of a musical scale (five major steps above the note in question); thus G is the dominant of C, A of D, and so on. 

  • The triad built on the dominant tone. 

  • A gene that is dominant. 

  • The dominating partner in sadomasochistic sexual activity. 

  • A species or organism that is dominant. 

primary

adj
  • main; principal; chief; placed ahead of others. 

  • Earliest formed; fundamental. 

  • first or earliest in a group or series. 

  • Relating to day-to-day care provided by health professionals such as nurses, general practitioners, dentists etc. 

  • Relating to the place where a disorder or disease started to occur. 

  • Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement. 

verb
  • To challenge (an incumbent sitting politician) for their political party's nomination to run for re-election, through running a challenger campaign in a primary election, especially one that is more ideologically extreme. 

  • To take part in a primary election. 

noun
  • A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary 

  • A primary school. 

  • A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party. 

  • A radar return from an aircraft (or other object) produced solely by the reflection of the radar beam from the aircraft's skin, without additional information from the aircraft's transponder. 

  • Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird. 

  • A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible. 

  • The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system, such as a planet in relation to its satellites. 

  • The first year of grade school. 

  • A primary colour. 

  • Primary site of disease; original location or source of the disease. 

  • The first stage of a thermonuclear weapon, which sets off a fission explosion to help trigger a fusion reaction in the weapon's secondary stage. 

How often have the words dominant and primary occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )