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Elementary vs Intermediate - What's the difference?

elementary | intermediate |

As adjectives the difference between intermediate and elementary

is that intermediate is being between two extremes, or in the middle of a range while elementary is relating to the basic, essential or fundamental part of something.

As a noun intermediate

is anything in an intermediate position.

As a verb intermediate

is to mediate, to be an intermediate.

elementary

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Relating to the basic, essential or fundamental part of something.
  • Relating to an elementary school.
  • (physics) Relating to a subatomic particle.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
  • , author=(Jeremy Bernstein) , title=A Palette of Particles , volume=100, issue=2, page=146 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=The physics of elementary particles in the 20th century was distinguished by the observation of particles whose existence had been predicted by theorists sometimes decades earlier.}}
  • (archaic) Sublunary; not celestial; belonging to the sublunary sphere, to which the four classical elements (earth, air, fire and water) were confined; composed of or pertaining to these four elements.
  • References

    *

    intermediate

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Being between two extremes, or in the middle of a range.
  • {{quote-Fanny Hill, part=3 , which covered his belly to the navel and gave it the air of a flesh brush; and soon I felt it joining close to mine, when he had drove the nail up to the head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair on both sides.}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.}}

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anything in an intermediate position.
  • An intermediary.
  • (chemistry) Any substance formed as part of a series of chemical reactions that is not the end-product.
  • Verb

    (intermediat)
  • to mediate, to be an intermediate
  • to arrange, in the manner of a broker
  • Central banks need to regulate the entities that intermediate monetary transactions.

    Derived terms

    * intermediation *