Sorry, got carried away with my recommendation of "preeminent" as a replacement with a stronger connotation of importance. The two are colloquially interchangea

Sorry, got carried away with my recommendation of "preeminent" as a replacement with a stronger connotation of importance. The two are colloquially interchangeable, I agree. Back to semantics: in Latin, prominere means "jutting out, standing out". I fall for the originalist definition sometimes, though certainly a thing's importance can be derived from its prominence. :)