喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can picture a list of everything waiting for your attention, arranged in the order it will actually be dealt with. The priority is whatever sits at the top of that list — not necessarily the biggest or hardest thing, but the one that goes before the others. Every use of the word keeps that same shape: something has been placed in front, and everything else waits behind it.

可以想成一張排好順序的清單，上面是所有等著你處理的事，而順序就是它們真正被處理的先後。priority 就是排在最上…更多收起可以想成一張排好順序的清單，上面是所有等著你處理的事，而順序就是它們真正被處理的先後。priority 就是排在最上面的那一項——不一定最大、也不一定最難，但它就是要先。這個字的每一種用法都留著同一個畫面：有東西被放到前面去了，其他的都得在後面等。

From the picture

被排在別人前面的權利與待遇

同一個「排在前面」的畫面，但從「我自己排事情」換成「制度替人排隊」：不是我決定先做哪件事，而是規則決定誰先被服務。

precedence · noun · B2

The right to be dealt with or to go before other people or things.

優先權

Also in this word

top priority · noun · B2

The thing you treat as most important and deal with before anything else.

優先要務

原始詞典資料6 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

prioritynoun/pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/

  • 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

    biologynatural-sciencestaxonomyA 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

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

資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。