A primary color is one of a small set of basic colors that cannot be made by mixing other colors together, but can be combined to create many other colors. Think of them as the fundamental building blocks of the color world.

In art class, when you work with paint or crayons, the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. You can't make blue by mixing other colors, but you can mix blue and yellow to create green. Mix red and yellow, and you get orange.

Interestingly, light works differently. For screens and digital displays like your computer or tablet, the primary colors are red, green, and blue (often called RGB). Your TV creates every color you see by combining different amounts of these three colors of light.

The word primary here means first or most important, just like a primary ingredient in a recipe or the primary goal of a project. Primary colors are primary because they come first: every other color is built from them, but they can't be built from anything else.