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Glite Dictionary
to prioritize quality over quantity

to prioritize quality over quantity

4.6
To give more value to quality than to having many things
  • phrasal verb
  • US
translation icon : priorizar la calidad sobre la cantidad
  • Great leaders always prioritize quality over quantity when making critical decisions.

Examples

  • Our school encourages teachers to prioritize quality over quantity in their lesson plans.

  • Successful businesses prioritize quality over quantity to build a loyal customer base.

  • If you prioritize quality over quantity, your work will stand out from the rest.

  • Let's prioritize quality over quantity!

  • I prioritize quality over quantity.

  • When choosing suppliers, we must prioritize quality over quantity to ensure the best products.

  • To improve our reputation, it is essential to prioritize quality over quantity in every project.

Surface Forms

prioritize quality over quantity infinitive
prioritized quality over quantity past
prioritized quality over quantity past participle
prioritizing quality over quantity present participle
prioritizes quality over quantity third person singular

Morphology

prioritize + quality + over + quantity

The meaning is directly and compositionally built from 'prioritize' (give precedence), 'quality' and 'quantity' with 'over' marking preference/comparison; a learner who knows these words can infer that quality should be given greater importance than quantity. This comparator pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows straightforward English composition, so a B1 learner would readily understand it even if 'over' was not separately defined here.

Etymology

Prioritize quality over quantity gives a clear picture: imagine a baker who makes a few perfect cakes rather than many poor ones. Choosing quality, meaning the better cakes, over quantity, meaning the larger number, shows it means 'to give more importance to how good something is than to how much of it there is'.