| Principal 1. (a.) 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. 2. (a.) of or pertaining to a prince; princely. 3. (n.) 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. 4. (n.) The chief actor in a crime, or an abettor who is present at it, -- as distinguished from an accessory. 5. (n.) A chief obligor, promisor, or debtor, -- as distinguished from a surety. 6. (n.) One who employs another to act for him, -- as distinguished from an agent. 7. (n.) A thing of chief or prime importance; something fundamental or especially conspicuous. 8. (n.) 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. 9. (n.) 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. 10. (n.) 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. 11. (n.) A heirloom; a mortuary. 12. (n.) The first two long feathers of a hawk's wing. 13. (n.) One of turrets or pinnacles of waxwork and tapers with which the posts and center of a funeral hearse were formerly crowned. 14. (n.) A principal or essential point or rule; a principle. Thesaurus Entries A per se, English horn, academic dean, ace, administration, administrator, all-absorbing, arch, assets, backing, banner, bassoon, block flute, bombard, boss, bourdon, capital, capital gains distribution, capital structure, capitalization, cardinal, cash reserves, cello, central, chairman, champion, chancellor, chief, chief executive officer, circulating capital, claribel, clarinet, clarion, commander, concert flute, controlling, cornet, cornopean, corpus, cromorna, crowning, cymbel, danseur noble, dean, dean of men, dean of women, diapason, director, diva, dominant, doyen, doyenne, dulciana, electronics king, equity capital, feature attraction, first, first tragedian, fixed capital, floating capital, flute stop, focal, foremost, foundation stop, fourniture, front, fugleman, fund, gamba, gedeckt, gemshorn, genius, great, harmonic flute, head, headliner, headmaster, headmistress, headmost, heavy lead, hegemonic, hero, heroine, high priest, higher-up, highest, honcho, hybrid stop, important, important person, investment, jeune premier, key, king, kingfish, kingpin, koppel flute, larigot, laureate, lead, leader, leading, leading lady, leading light, leading man, luminary, magisterial, maiden, main, major, managing director, master, master spirit, melodia, mixture, money, moneyed capital, mutation stop, nazard, nonpareil, oboe, octave, organ stop, outstanding, overriding, overruling, owner, paragon, paramount, personage, piccolo, plein jeu, posaune, predominant, preeminent, premier, preponderant, president, prevailing, prima ballerina, prima donna, primal, primary, prime, prodigy, prominent, proprietor, protagonist, provost, quint, quintaten, rank, ranket, ranking, rector, reed stop, register, resources, rohr flute, ruler, ruling, senior, sesquialtera, shawm, singer, sovereign, spitz flute, star, starring, stellar, stop, stopped diapason, stopped flute, string diapason, string stop, supereminent, superintendent, superior, superman, superstar, supervisor, supreme, the greatest, the most, tierce, top dog, topflight, topmost, tremolo, trombone, trumpet, twelfth, unda maris, uppermost, venture capital, vibrato, vice-chancellor, viola, virtuoso, voix celeste, vox angelica, vox humana, working capital |