The Pluralization Of Priority

The word “priority” used to be singular.

If you had a list, ONLY ONE THING was at the top.

From the year 1400, when the first instance of the word showed up, until about 1900, priority meant “first thing on the list.”

Maybe it was the second industrial revolution.

Maybe it was the advent of the modern management consultant.

But, whatever it was, starting around 1900 we started to see the word “priorities” show up.

Plural.

Greg McKeown documents it in his book Essentialism. He speculates,

Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things.

It’s tempting to have multiple top-priorities.

And it’s very real to having competing priorities in any problem set.

But, if the word is plural, nothing is really first.

(I’m genuinely trying to chew on this one extra in 2025)

h/t David Burkus who reminded Kit Huffman and me about this story in our Just Press Record conversation: