priority

noun6

1. •
   how much more or less something matters than other things

   • He set his e-mail message's priority to high.
2. •
   A goal of a person or an organisation.

   • She needs to get her priorities straight and stop playing games.
3. •
   Precedence; superior rank.

   • Follow Cominius. We must follow you. / Right worthy you priority. — 1608
4. •
   Right of way; The right to pass (an intersection) before other road users.
5. •
   The quality of being earlier or coming first compared to another thing; the state of being prior.

   • In bankruptcy law, a business' debt to its employees has priority over its debt to a landlord, so the employees must be paid first.
6. •
   A superior claim to use by virtue of being validly published at an earlier date.

   • Neither [Jones][…] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority." — 1992