1634 J. Bate Myst. Nature & Art ii. 91 Either of these [petards] must bee well primed, and their primed ends must be towards the inside of the lance.

1664 P. Wyche tr. J. Freire de Andrade Life Dom John de Castro iii. 183 The Moors often put their match to the prim'd Guns.

1748 S. Richardson Clarissa VI. cxxiii. 396 Like the Czar's Cossacks.., who were planted with ready primed and cocked pieces, behind the regulars, in order to shoot them dead, if they did not push on, and conquer.

1837 T. Carlyle French Revol. III. vii. vii. 441 General Menou, about eight in the evening, finds that he is standing ranked in the Rue Vivienne,..with primed guns pointed out of every window at him.

1933 Bee (Danville, Va.) 7 Jan. 1/4 A revolver was on the table and Eames..met them at the door with a loaded and primed shot gun.

1991 D. Coupland Generation X ii. xviii. 102 They were forced to lie down on the ground, covered in camouflage, with their primed machine guns pointed at the enemy.

2001 Irish Voice (N.Y.) (Electronic ed.) 2 Jan. A primed bomb was driven into Belfast city center last week.

1639 T. Cary tr. J. Puget de la Serre Mirrour which flatters Not ii. 108 Ambitious Spirits, faire leave have you to draw the Stell of your designes upon this ready prim'd cloth.

1725 R. Bradley Chomel's Dictionaire Œconomique at Painting The Primed Cloth, which is usually good Canvas made smooth, sized over with a little Honey, and when dry'd, whited over with Size and Whiting..upon which you paint.

1756 G. Smith tr. Laboratory (new ed.) II. iii. 58 Having first made a rough sketch upon your primed cloth with white chalk.

1850 Sci. Amer. 1 June 293/2 Work finished as above described would be technically specified as knotted, primed, painted 3 oils, and flatted.

1946 Times 1 May 3/2 The chief complaints had been about the lack of primed canvas and insufficient supply of brushes and colours.

1991 Motor Boat & Yachting Jan. 328/1 (advt.) Primed or painted finish.

1923 Amer. Jrnl. Bot. 10 33 The organism is ‘primed and cocked’. The requisite external stimulus functions merely as a means of releasing the ‘trigger’.]

1938 Lancet 18 June 1389 A group of 60 primed ovariectomised rats were used for assay.

1943 Jrnl. Endocrinol. 3 273 In considering the question of inducing superovulation from the primed ovary, the first question arising is whether the ovulation-producing act of mating is sufficient to cause ovulation in a greater than normal number of follicles.

1967 Science 17 Nov. 940/1 Biochemical examinations of primed and nonprimed mice may reveal whether differences in oxidative phosphorylation..are associated with changes in audiogenic seizure susceptibility.

1991 Pract. Gardening Dec. 68/3 After sowing, primed seed comes up much more quickly than normal seed, even in hot conditions.

1878 U.S. Patent 203,219 1/1 The primed letters A' to H', inclusive, indicate the same parts as the corresponding unprimed letters.

1927 Proc. Royal Soc. 1926–7 A. 113 630 We shall make it a rule always to use..primed or multiply primed letters such as ξ′ and α″ to denote parameters, representing matrix rows and columns.

1944 C. Palache et al. Dana's Syst. Mineral. (ed. 7) I. 13 Projection values are primed, and polar values unprimed.

1998 Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 126 2529 The primed elements will come into play only when p = 2.