principal vs second

principal

noun
  • A legal person that authorizes another (the agent) to act on their behalf; or on whose behalf an agent or gestor in a negotiorum gestio acts. 

  • The chief administrator of a school. 

  • A diapason, a type of organ stop on a pipe organ. 

  • The construction that gives shape and strength to a roof, generally a truss of timber or iron; or, loosely, the most important member of a piece of framing. 

  • A dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company. 

  • The primary participant in a crime. 

  • The first two long feathers of a hawk's wing. 

  • A security principal. 

  • The chief executive and chief academic officer of a university or college. 

  • The money originally invested or loaned, on which basis interest and returns are calculated. 

  • A partner or owner of a business. 

  • One of the turrets or pinnacles of waxwork and tapers with which the posts and centre of a funeral hearse were formerly crowned 

adj
  • Chosen or assumed among a branch of possible values of a multi-valued function so that the function is single-valued. 

  • Primary; most important; first level in importance. 

second

noun
  • One who supports or seconds a motion, or the act itself, as required in certain meetings to pass judgement etc. 

  • The agent of a party to an honour dispute whose role was to try to resolve the dispute or to make the necessary arrangements for a duel. 

  • An additional helping of food. 

  • Something that is number two in a series. 

  • A second-class honours degree. 

  • One-sixtieth of a minute; the SI unit of time, defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of caesium-133 in a ground state at a temperature of absolute zero and at rest. 

  • A unit of angle equal to one-sixtieth of a minute of arc or one part in 3600 of a degree. 

  • The interval between two adjacent notes in a diatonic scale (either or both of them may be raised or lowered from the basic scale via any type of accidental). 

  • A manufactured item that, though still usable, fails to meet quality control standards. 

  • Second base. 

  • A short, indeterminate amount of time. 

  • Something that is next in rank, quality, precedence, position, status, or authority. 

  • A chance or attempt to achieve what should have been done the first time, usually indicating success this time around. (See second-guess.) 

  • The place that is next below or after first in a race or contest. 

  • A Cub Scout appointed to assist the sixer. 

  • The second gear of an engine. 

  • One who supports another in a contest or combat, such as a dueller's assistant. 

adv
  • After the first; at the second rank. 

  • After the first occurrence but before the third. 

adj
  • Number-two; following after the first one with nothing between them. The ordinal number corresponding to the cardinal number two. 

  • Next to the first in value, power, excellence, dignity, or rank; secondary; subordinate; inferior. 

  • Being of the same kind as one that has preceded; another. 

verb
  • To climb after a lead climber. 

  • To assist or support; to back. 

  • To agree as a second person to (a proposal), usually to reach a necessary quorum of two. (See under [[#Etymology 3]] for translations.) 

  • To agree as a second person to (a proposal), usually to reach a necessary quorum of two. (This may come from the English adjective above.) 

  • To accompany by singing as the second performer. 

  • To follow in the next place; to succeed. 

  • To transfer temporarily to alternative employment. 

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