Etymology From Latin prīmus (“[the] first”); related to prior, the comparative form. Partially cognate to foremost, from Proto-Indo-European [Term?]. Doublet of prime and primo.
1
One of the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, who presides at the meetings of the bishops, and has certain privileges but no metropolitan authority.
1884, Gonzalo Canilla, speech at the Centenary of the consecration of Samuel Seabury my own grandfather, some time Bishop of Edinburgh, among its Primuses
Varya walked past slowly, idly peeping into each of them. There was a vendor of Turkish delight and halvah. A haberdasher's stall. A cobbler. A whitesmith. A repairer of Primuses and oil stoves.1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 53: