Noun

The status of being preeminent, dominant or ascendant.

High importance; superiority.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Philip E. Mirowski , title=Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits , volume=100, issue=1, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.}}

Noun

(-)

(obsolete) excellence, superiority, preeminence

* 1662 , , p. 1:

then be put upon so much immodesty my self as to speak anything that may seem to give it any precellency above what is already extant in the world about the same matter.