priority

noun

Etymology: From Old French priorite, from Latin priōritās. Surface analysis: prior + -ity.

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.”

   “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. A superior claim to use by virtue of being validly published at an earlier date.

   “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. Precedence; superior rank.

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

   “Sozomen is not criticizing Constantine but rather asserting that bishops have priority over emperors, in case the readers might not have understood this […]”

6. Right of way; The right to pass (an intersection) before other road users.