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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
principal
I.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a principal witness (=a main witness)
▪ The principal witness was too ill to testify.
principal boy
sb's primary/chief/principal concern
▪ The president said his primary concern was the welfare of the American people.
the leading/principal actor (=acting the most important part)
▪ Schwarzeneeger was one of Hollywood’s leading actors.
the main/chief/principal guest
▪ The Prime Minister was one of the main guests at the event.
the main/primary/principal aim
▪ The country’s main aim was to slow inflation.
the main/principal objective
▪ This research project has three main objectives.
the major/main/principal export
▪ Agricultural products are the country’s principal exports.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
actor
▪ For others, governments are to provide the main resources for and be the principal actors in public communication.
▪ Thus the Father had been the principal actor during the period of the Old Testament.
▪ Reporters try to establish what the unfolding events mean to the principal actors concerned.
▪ It is a simplification to banish all but the principal actors from the international stage.
aim
▪ Musical variety seems to have been Campra's principal aim in nearly half of his later cantatas.
▪ The principal aim of this exploratory research is to gain a better understanding of franchising and the franchising decision.
▪ A principal aim is, of course, to present the pupils successfully for external exams.
▪ The principal aim is to raise awareness among workers and employers of hazards in the workplace.
▪ One of its principal aims is to make sure that those with disabilities can lead lives that are as normal as possible.
▪ The principal aim of the project is to provide an answer to this question.
▪ The principal aim seems to be to find out how far it can be extended.
▪ To render capitalism more humane and efficient was the principal aim of the professional expert.
amount
▪ Another example is that of index linked loans which may be redeemable at the principal amount multiplied by an index.
author
▪ Savas was principal author of the early drafts of the National Urban Policy Report.
carer
▪ We asked principal carers, therefore, which of a list of symptoms the person they cared for suffered from.
▪ These can be drawn out from within the history of a caring relationship particularly where there is a principal carer taking responsibility.
▪ We re-interviewed those principal carers whose relatives, etc had moved to permanent institutional care by the end of one year.
▪ Table 5.2 shows the relationship of the principal carer to the dementia sufferer.
▪ How, therefore, did principal carers view the dementia sufferer's continued home care?
▪ The changing patterns of marriage and companionate relationships will also expand the range of principal carers.
cause
▪ He used Pareto analysis to identify the principal cause as a loose loading arm.
▪ Deficiencies in the local infrastructure were assumed to be the principal cause of community distress.
▪ However it is also the principal cause of their weaknesses.
▪ Equipment problems were considered to be the principal cause of inaccurate measurements. 6.
▪ Drugs aside, nitrate over 100 mg/litre is the principal cause.
▪ Nor is it much concerned with exceptions to the rule that, to every effect, there is one principal cause.
▪ All the measures that I catalogued earlier will help to reduce vehicle emissions - the principal cause of bad air.
▪ He could not accept that the goal or end of a process, the final cause, was the principal cause.
character
▪ The principal characters, Larissa Toren and Armel Santores, teach literature and literary theory at two equally radical universities.
▪ And three of the principal characters are women.
▪ As well as the two principal characters, there were a warrior, to do the calling away, and two attendants.
▪ The title is, as the story reveals, the name of the principal character who is a man.
component
▪ The principal component, as always, is lack of language proficiency.
▪ The programme plots speakers in terms of their scores on two principal components, represented as axes of the graph.
▪ The first principal component, carrying 50 percent of the original variance, was dominated by land-cover differences in the rural area.
▪ A second widely-used transform is that of principal components.
▪ The final attempt at classification involved a supervised classification of principal components, 2, 3 and 4.
▪ The decline in information content from principal component 1 to principal component 4 does not need any verbal description.
▪ The first principal component has most information and hence the greatest contrast and least noise.
concern
▪ Floirat also owned luxury hotels, the principal concern of the new conglomerate Matra-Hachette.
▪ One of the principal concerns in La Strada is the loss of potential, the elimination of creative possibility.
▪ Quality a principal concern Each product manufactured by Janssen Chimica is quality tested at least three times, depending upon the requirements.
▪ For the moment our principal concern will be to enquire into the forces which produce deviations of p, from,.
▪ The Army had no capital ships or aircraft to worry about: manpower was its principal concern.
▪ There seem to have been two principal concerns.
▪ When looking at reliability one principal concern was the purpose of the writer - whether of a primary or secondary source.
▪ When considering value the principal concern is the use to which that evidence will be put.
factor
▪ One of the principal factors is the reliance on coal as the main source of power.
▪ Three principal factors account for the growing significance of this season.
▪ A lack of response would suggest that the high concentration of alcohol is the principal factor.
▪ Failure to define, at any rate in politics, is the principal factor which keeps us in employment.
▪ Interestingly but not surprisingly, a higher proportion of men than women took occupation to be the principal factor determining class.
▪ Estimates of the development cost vary greatly, but the high cost is certainly a principal factor in holding back the market.
▪ In such cases two principal factors are at work.
▪ The renewed development of the market in the 1980s can be traced to three principal factors.
focus
▪ Given that macro-decisions inherently and inevitably condition micro-decisions, the principal focus of attention must be on the political decision-maker.
▪ The principal focus of this research is the major regulatory arena of occupational health and safety.
▪ Hajdu's principal focus is on Dylan's relationship with Baez.
▪ But the principal focus for freight traffic was the goods station.
▪ The principal focus of the Commission's enquiry relates to the provision of financial services.
function
▪ Since the principal function of grammar is to indicate how units of meaning are to be combined, this is scarcely surprising.
▪ This has always been considered one of the principal functions of the Court.
▪ I sometimes think that the principal function of professional training in education is to inoculate teachers against books on education.
▪ There are three principal functions of tribunals and enquiries: adjudication, regulation and advice.
▪ Thus, a principal function of top management is to co-ordinate and monitor the efforts of those lower down the hierarchy.
▪ And in fact public shaming was one of the principal functions of police registration and surveillance.
investigator
▪ This convention results in the last authors - who usually include the principal investigator - being dropped from the citation.
▪ William Evans designed pharmacological studies and was a principal investigator on the primary leukaemia protocol.
▪ Ching-Hon Pui was a principal investigator of the leukaemia treatment protocols and interpreted the data.
▪ The principal investigators will be responsible for interviewing key informants about the way the system has been modified in recent years.
▪ We invited the principal investigators from the remaining 7 trials to participate in this analysis and they agreed.
▪ A mathematical theory of statistical predictors and how to assess their accuracy has been developed by the principal investigator and others.
▪ The research is being undertaken on an inter-disciplinary basis and the two principal investigators are an economist and a social policy specialist.
means
▪ The principal means of growth and development including accretion, redefinition and invention.
▪ The principal means for educating Nonconformist ministers were the various denominational colleges.
▪ But in Birmingham the railways were never the principal means of transport for the urban commuter.
▪ For a start, there is the cost of what has traditionally been the principal means of covering risk - insurance.
▪ During the 1660s and 1670s he was one of the principal means by which the government sought to influence City politics.
▪ Workers employed in the mills and factories of industrial areas took to the bicycle as a principal means of travel to work.
▪ One government or form of government competes with another, and the principal means are indicated by their military budgets.
method
▪ Our Falconet target aircraft uses a centrifugal launcher as its principal method of getting airborne.
▪ The principal methods of investigation are interviewing and the collation of documentary evidence.
▪ There are two principal methods of dealing with this.
▪ The principal method of inquiry is analysis of company records and other contemporary sources.
▪ The principal method of investigation will be survey by interview and questionnaire.
▪ The principal method of investigation is in-depth studies with companies in different industries who are using Quality Circles.
objective
▪ Its principal objectives include the promotion of health and safety, the protection of the environment and the establishment of quality standards.
▪ The principal objective of the scheme is to provide each of the fourteen candidates with a 12-month commitment to his appropriate squad.
▪ His principal objective was to clear his name of the suspicion attached to it.
officer
▪ He served in various parts of the country, reaching the grade of principal officer by 1833.
▪ The councillor should become acquainted with the principal officers from whom he can gain a considerable amount of information and help.
▪ Chris Johns, principal officer for social care, said it would direct resources to those with most need.
▪ There was a table at one end where a principal officer and a couple of others sat overseeing the whole lot.
▪ The principal officers of the local authority are those which the authority decides to appoint.
place
▪ Service may be effected at his principal place of business in the jurisdiction, regardless of his current residence.
▪ That location will normally be the principal place of their business.
▪ Information booklet on your chosen resort, including a guide to the principal places of interest.
problem
▪ The principal problem area concerns the additional amount of computation that may be necessary successfully to implement Monte Carlo based techniques.
▪ On the first approach, the principal problem with the system is, it is agreed, corruption.
▪ There are two principal problems associated with this.
▪ The principal problem about them has generally been said to be that of their meaning or semantics.
▪ What is the nature of media coverage of fraud, and what are the principal problems of communicating frauds to the public?
▪ The principal problem for both speech and handwriting recognition is the variability of the input.
reason
▪ One of the principal reasons for this was considered to be the existence of the defence for men under 24.
▪ Hashimoto is the frontrunner for two principal reasons.
▪ The principal reason for this is the high degree of reliance a human places on linguistic information.
▪ This is the principal reason that the great voices of opera seldom sing popular songs.
▪ I see two principal reasons why this happened.
▪ What is the principal reason for its existence?
▪ The other principal reason was the numerous changes in staff caused by transfer, resignation and retirals.
▪ Priority-gaining in the event of a company's liquidation is one of the principal reasons for taking security.
repayment
▪ In practice, therefore, these principal repayments took the place of depreciation.
▪ Thus we can calculate the money value of the final coupon payment and principal repayment on 30 March 1988 as follows.
▪ This would arise where depreciation charges were less than principal repayments would have been.
▪ If it was to be provided in addition to principal repayments in the revenue account, then local authorities' capital would increase.
▪ The asset is capitalized, interest is expensed and principal repayments do not pass through the revenue account.
▪ Consequently, the argument about depreciation producing more correct costs in the revenue account applies equally to principal repayments in lieu of depreciation.
role
▪ Will the principal roles be taken by the same group of children who starred in previous years?
▪ The principal role of these units is to keep tomorrow's graduates in touch with the problems and methods of defence.
▪ A principal role should be undertaken by staff directly involved with and who are experienced in dealing with, elderly groups.
▪ A brief discussion pointed out that his principal role was that of liaison between the Commission and the Association of Catholic Headteachers.
source
▪ The principal source of finance for all of this remained the record company.
▪ Professional pollsters have displaced precinct party chairmen as the principal source of information about what the public is thinking.
▪ With coffee prices badly depressed, the tea industry seemed set to become the second principal source of foreign exchange earnings.
▪ This is one of the two principal sources of new NEOs.
▪ Anticommunism and the constitutional order provided the principal sources of political cohesion in the new political entity.
▪ The intended budget of £5 million could reap benefits in a city where tourist revenue is becoming a principal source of wealth.
▪ Such surveys formed the basis for research for many years and still remain the principal source for some categories of data.
task
▪ Advice for Quality Assurers Your principal task is to decide whether a package is fit for the purpose intended.
▪ He discussed each of his principal tasks - there were only four, each clearly delineated.
▪ As such, his principal task was to secure the concordat, which was signed at the end of August 1953.
▪ Thus the principal task of theories which specifically address modem football hooliganism is to account for these dominant forms of behaviour.
▪ The new parliament's principal task would be to draft a constitution for approval by the electorate in a referendum.
▪ The principal task initially was to create a wider range of accommodation services.
witness
▪ And he said there was now further evidence to discredit a principal witness in the case as a liar and a cheat.
▪ The prosecution dropped the charges in 1976, announcing that the principal witness was too ill to ever testify.
▪ What took place has to be reconstructed with the principal witness for the prosecution being unavailable.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Oil is the country's principal source of income.
▪ Your taxes depend on where your principal residence is located.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After about two miles, I take the left fork and keep to the principal route.
▪ And in fact public shaming was one of the principal functions of police registration and surveillance.
▪ Drafting cables to be dispatched to Washington is one of the principal occupations of the foreign service officer in the field.
▪ The principal component, as always, is lack of language proficiency.
▪ The principal method of inquiry is analysis of company records and other contemporary sources.
▪ The important properties of these three principal volcanic rock groups can be summarized in simple tables.
II.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
assistant
▪ Some assistant principals hold this position for several years to prepare for advancement to principal; others are career assistant principals.
▪ Depending on the number of students, the number of assistant principals a school employs may vary.
▪ He then served on county staff development staffs until becoming assistant principal at Bryant in 1998.
▪ But more assistant principals and janitors are necessary to make the schools operate effectively, Saylor said.
▪ Much of that sentiment stems from the transfer in March of Gloria Nogales-Talley, a popular Latina assistant principal.
▪ Similarly, a New York court ruled that a school district could transfer a teacher who married her assistant principal.
▪ But he said it looks bad to the public to cut teachers while hiring janitors and assistant principals.
high
▪ Two days later the former Enniskillen high school principal slipped into a coma from which he never awakened.
▪ The Tams, who worked then as a high school principal and a kindergarten teacher, lived in a two-story home.
▪ Major Jack Tilley warmed up the troops much in the fashion of a jovial high school principal preparing students for graduation.
■ NOUN
college
▪ Two youths in Texas had tried to kill the college principal, failed and poisoned themselves.
▪ The arrangements for the transition have been announced in a letter from to college principals.
▪ However, it appears that in Essex at least, individual college principals have agreed to negotiate their introduction and avert strikes.
▪ I have not met a college principal who intends to change that practice.
school
▪ Two days later the former Enniskillen high school principal slipped into a coma from which he never awakened.
▪ The Tams, who worked then as a high school principal and a kindergarten teacher, lived in a two-story home.
▪ Peter Barkworth's dainty but needling school principal is another candidate for the comic hall of fame.
▪ The Washington Post reported that some elementary school principals have banned the stuff, just like the nuns used to.
▪ His partner is an elementary school principal in town.
▪ Consider the school principal who discovers students wearing beepers to stay in contact with their superiors in the drug trade.
▪ Major Jack Tilley warmed up the troops much in the fashion of a jovial high school principal preparing students for graduation.
▪ In my early thirties I applied for a position as a school principal.
■ VERB
pay
▪ Insured bonds carry a pledge from a private backer to pay interest and principal on the bonds if the issuer defaults.
▪ Two funds were frozen by the government; others declared bankruptcy or slashed their interest rates and stopped paying back principal.
▪ Which is, pay the principal, forget the interest.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Another teacher who moved me was an assistant principal named Cho, who doubled as a history teacher.
▪ Each son has a career in education -- three teachers and one principal.
▪ His comments on Paul Caton, the deputy principal, were gratuitously offensive.
▪ In the course of acting for each of their principals, estate agents will acquire information confidential to that principal.
▪ Insured bonds carry a pledge from a private backer to pay interest and principal on the bonds if the issuer defaults.
▪ Major Jack Tilley warmed up the troops much in the fashion of a jovial high school principal preparing students for graduation.
▪ Once, after he had been absent a fortnight, the principal tackled his parents.
▪ The government will also receive inflation-adjusted 12 percent interest on the unpaid principal.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Principal

Principal \Prin"ci*pal\, n.

  1. A leader, chief, or head; one who takes the lead; one who acts independently, or who has controlling authority or influence; as, the principal of a faction, a school, a firm, etc.; -- distinguished from a subordinate, abettor, auxiliary, or assistant.

  2. Hence: (Law)

    1. The chief actor in a crime, or an abettor who is present at it, -- as distinguished from an accessory.

    2. A chief obligor, promisor, or debtor, -- as distinguished from a surety.

    3. One who employs another to act for him, -- as distinguished from an agent.
      --Wharton.
      --Bouvier.
      --Burrill.

  3. A thing of chief or prime importance; something fundamental or especially conspicuous. Specifically:

    1. (Com.) A capital sum of money, placed out at interest, due as a debt or used as a fund; -- so called in distinction from interest or profit.

    2. (Arch. & Engin.) The construction which gives shape and strength to a roof, -- generally a truss of timber or iron, but there are roofs with stone principals. Also, loosely, the most important member of a piece of framing.

    3. (Mus.) In English organs the chief open metallic stop, an octave above the open diapason. On the manual it is four feet long, on the pedal eight feet. In Germany this term corresponds to the English open diapason.

    4. (O. Eng. Law) A heirloom; a mortuary.
      --Cowell.

    5. pl. The first two long feathers of a hawk's wing.
      --Spenser.
      --J. H. Walsh.

    6. One of turrets or pinnacles of waxwork and tapers with which the posts and center of a funeral hearse were formerly crowned.
      --Oxf. Gloss.

    7. A principal or essential point or rule; a principle.

Principal

Principal \Prin"ci*pal\, a. [F., from L. principalis. See Prince.]

  1. Highest in rank, authority, character, importance, or degree; most considerable or important; chief; main; as, the principal officers of a Government; the principal men of a state; the principal productions of a country; the principal arguments in a case.

    Wisdom is the principal thing.
    --Prov. iv. 7.

  2. Of or pertaining to a prince; princely. [A Latinism] [Obs.]
    --Spenser.

    Principal axis. See Axis of a curve, under Axis.

    Principal axes of a quadric (Geom.), three lines in which the principal planes of the solid intersect two and two, as in an ellipsoid.

    Principal challenge. (Law) See under Challenge.

    Principal plane. See Plane of projection (a), under Plane.

    Principal of a quadric (Geom.), three planes each of which is at right angles to the other two, and bisects all chords of the quadric perpendicular to the plane, as in an ellipsoid.

    Principal point (Persp.), the projection of the point of sight upon the plane of projection.

    Principal ray (Persp.), the line drawn through the point of sight perpendicular to the perspective plane.

    Principal section (Crystallog.), a plane passing through the optical axis of a crystal.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
principal

c.1300, "main, principal, chief, dominant, most important;" also "great, large," from Old French principal "main, most important," of persons, "princely, high-ranking" (11c.), from Latin principalis "first in importance; original, primitive," from princeps "first man, chief, leader" (see prince).

principal

c.1300, "ruler, governor;" also "main part;" from principal (adj.) or from or influenced by noun uses in Old French and Latin. From mid-14c. in the sense of "money on which interest is paid;" 1827 as "person in charge of a public school," though meaning "head of a college or hall" was in English from mid-15c.

Wiktionary
principal

a. 1 Primary; most important. 2 (context obsolete Latinism English) Of or relating to a prince; princely. n. 1 (context finance uncountable English) The money originally invested or loaned, on which basis interest and returns are calculated. 2 (context North America Australia New Zealand English) The chief administrator of a school. 3 (context UK Scotland Canada English) The chief executive and chief academic officer of a university or college. 4 (context legal English) One who directs another (the agent) to act on one′s behalf. 5 (context legal English) The primary participant in a crime. 6 A company represented by a salesperson. 7 (senseid en partner or owner)(context North America English) A partner or owner of a business. 8 (context music English) A diapason, a type of organ stop on a pipe organ. 9 (context architecture engineering English) 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. 10 The first two long feathers of a hawk's wing. 11 One of the turrets or pinnacles of waxwork and tapers with which the posts and centre of a funeral hearse were formerly crowned. 12 (context obsolete English) An essential point or rule; a principle. 13 A dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company.

WordNet
principal
  1. n. the original amount of a debt on which interest is calculated

  2. the educator who has executive authority for a school; "she sent unruly pupils to see the principal" [syn: school principal, head teacher, head]

  3. an actor who plays a principal role [syn: star, lead]

  4. capital as contrasted with the income derived from it [syn: corpus, principal sum]

  5. the major party to a financial transaction at a stock exchange; buys and sells for his own account [syn: dealer]

principal

adj. most important element; "the chief aim of living"; "the main doors were of solid glass"; "the principal rivers of America"; "the principal example"; "policemen were primary targets" [syn: chief(a), main(a), primary(a), principal(a)]

Wikipedia
Principal

Principal may refer to:

Principal (criminal law)

Under criminal law, a principal is any actor who is primarily responsible for a criminal offense. Such an actor is distinguished from others who may also be subject to criminal liability as accomplices, accessories or conspirators.

Principal (commercial law)

In commercial law, a principal is a person, legal or natural, who authorizes an agent to act to create one or more legal relationships with a third party. This branch of law is called agency and relies on the common law proposition qui facit per alium, facit per se ( Latin "he who acts through another, acts personally").

It is a parallel concept to vicarious liability and strict liability (in which one person is held liable for the acts or omissions of another) in criminal law or torts.

Principal (computer security)

A principal in computer security is an entity that can be authenticated by a computer system or network. It is referred to as a security principal in Java and Microsoft literature.

Principals can be individual people, computers, services, computational entities such as processes and threads, or any group of such things. They need to be identified and authenticated before they can be assigned rights and privileges over resources in the network. A principal typically has an associated identifier (such as a security identifier) that allows it to be referenced for identification or assignment of properties and permissions.

Principal (academia)

The principal is the chief executive and the chief academic officer of a university or college in certain parts of the Commonwealth.

Principal (music)

The principal musician in an orchestra or other large musical ensemble is the leader of the group of musicians playing that instrument. Every instrumental group (or section) has a principal who is generally responsible for leading the group and playing orchestral solos. The violins are divided into two groups, first violin and second violin, each with its principal. The principal first violin is called the concertmaster (or "leader" in the UK) and is considered the leader of not only the string section, but of the entire orchestra, subordinate only to the conductor.

Usage examples of "principal".

Their example was universally imitated by their principal subjects, who were not afraid of declaring to the world that they had spirit to conceive, and wealth to accomplish, the noblest undertakings.

It has already been observed, that Eutropius, one of the principal eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin he had accomplished, and whose vices he soon imitated.

The same principal agent uses various instruments unto various effects, in accordance with the thing to be done.

In 1717, when Addison became principal secretary of state in England, he procured for Budgell the place of accountant and comptroller-general of the revenue in Ireland.

Swedish majesty, by the advice of the senate, thought proper to refuse complying with this request, alleging, that as the crown of Sweden was one of the principal guarantees of the treaty of Westphalia, it would be highly improper to take such a step in favour of a prince who had not only broke the laws and constitution of the empire, in refusing to furnish his contingent, but had even assisted, with his troops, a power known to be its declared enemy.

Loose regular meter, alliteration, stylised phrasing, and structuring by repetition are the principal poetic devices.

The turns of music consist of the appoggiatura which is the principal note, or that on which the turn is made, together with the note above and the semi-tone below, the note above being sounded first, the principal note next and the semi-tone below, last, the three being performed sticatoly, or very quickly.

When it is possible to divide the principal tone into halves, then the appoggiatura receives one-half the value of the printed note.

When the principal note is tied to a note of smaller denomination the appoggiatura receives the value of the first of the two notes.

Her eager inspection convinced her that the principal bolt was still withdrawn, but a smaller one was now perceived, of whose existence she had not been apprized, and over which her key had no power.

Every day, at the appointed hours, the principal officers of the state, the army, and the household, approaching the person of their sovereign with bended knees and a composed countenance, offered their respectful homage as seriously as if he had been still alive.

Pacific waters, but it did not, and when Pope reported for duty as executive officer he learned that his immediate assignment was to accompany the carrier out of Jacksonville and into the Caribbean, where it would serve as the principal recovery vessel for the three-orbit flight which Astronaut Scott Carpenter was about to make in his Mercury capsule Aurora-7.

As the neighboring islands could not trade with each other in wartime when their principals were entangled in the various belligerencies of Europe, as they were most of the time, they brought their goods to buy and sell in St.

The youths he trained in the exercise of arms, and near his own person: to the damsels he gave a liberal and Roman education, and by bestowing them in marriage on some of his principal officers, gradually introduced between the two nations the closest and most endearing connections.

It is true that a few of the sterner natures among them mingled menaces against the Bravo with their prayers for the dead, but these had no other effect on the matter in hand, than is commonly produced by the by-players on the principal action of the piece.