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The principal principle
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Maybe it's all the back-to-school activity, or maybe you learned the "principal is your pal" trick back in elementary school, but either way, you didn't seem to need much help with last week's quiz. The vast majority of you knew that the principal would announce a new cellphone policy on the first day of school: Would it have been as easy to fill in this blank, though? Their _____ concern is getting all the children there safely. While principle is only a noun, principal is a noun and an adjective. A "principle" is a rule, standard or belief. Meanwhile, you can think of "principal" as a synonym of "chief" in both parts of speech: As a noun, it means a leader, and as an adjective, it means most important or consequential. So in the sentence above, you'd use the adjective "principal," as in "main" or "primary." Now that we've discussed some synonyms for "principal," let's move on to a synonym of "principle" for this week's quiz:
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