Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
also pre-eminence, c.1200, from Late Latin praeeminentia "distinction, superiority," from Latin praeeminentem (nominative praeeminens), present participle of praeeminere "transcend, excel," literally "project forward, rise above," from prae "before" (see pre-) + eminere "stand out, project" (see eminent).
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of preeminence English)
Usage examples of "pre-eminence".
Soul, considered as a fragment of the Universal Mind, might be said to have lapsed from its pre-eminence when parted from its source, and ceasing to form part of integral perfection.
His pre-eminence in the latter faculty gave occasion to some etymologists to ring changes on his name, and to decide that it was derived from Follis Optimus, softened through an Italian medium into Folle Ottimo, contracted poetically into Folleotto, and elided Anglice into Folliott, signifying a firstrate pair of bellows.
Such a pre-eminence could not be enjoyed without exciting the malevolence of envy and detraction, in the propagation of which none were so industrious as the brethren of his own order, who had, like him, made a descent upon this island, and could not, without repining, see the whole harvest in the hands of one man, who, with equal art and discretion, avoided all intercourse with their society.
And hence the nature of the gift of fear regards not that evil which fear is concerned with, but the pre-eminence of that goodness, viz.
They looked at each other, and blushed and smiled as they saw my gaze fixed on two pre-eminences which one would never expect to see in any man.
It carried nuances of pre-eminence, clout, public importance and- above all-the ability to influence events through sheer public reputation.
God, that, in a very little time, he should be able to confute and overthrow the false philosophy of the moderns, and to restore the writings of Moses to that pre-eminence and veneration which is due to an inspired author.
If Lydgate had been aware of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in.
She ran it over briefly in her mind while Elathan spoke, addressing those few hundreds here in the Hall and all the watching billions: In only one day, she, Elathan and Haco Grex together had hammered out a preliminary treaty that, if all went according to plan in the coming battles, would put their three allied nations into such a position of galactic pre-eminence that not for the foreseeable future would Imperium or Phalanx or any other nascent and acquisitive superentity be able to challenge them.