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Primitive   /prˈɪmətɪv/  /prˈɪmɪtɪv/   Listen
Primitive

adjective
1.
Belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness.  Synonyms: crude, rude.  "Primitive movies of the 1890s" , "Primitive living conditions in the Appalachian mountains"
2.
Little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier ancestral type.  Synonym: archaic.  "Primitive mammals" , "The okapi is a short-necked primitive cousin of the giraffe"
3.
Used of preliterate or tribal or nonindustrial societies.
4.
Of or created by one without formal training; simple or naive in style.  Synonym: naive.
noun
1.
A person who belongs to an early stage of civilization.  Synonym: primitive person.
2.
A mathematical expression from which another expression is derived.
3.
A word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms.



Related searches:
primitive art
primitive person
primitiveness


WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


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"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books



... "It's something primitive. You must come over to Paris. If father likes you, he'll take you to one of the weekly lunches of the Anglo-American Press Circle. He always does that when he likes anyone. He's the Treasurer.... Haven't you got any millefeuille cakes?" ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... superficial glance at the written constitution of the Republic showed that its main object was to convert what had been a confederacy into an Incorporation; and that the very essence of its renewed political existence was an organic law laid down by a whole people in their primitive capacity in place of a league banding together a group of independent little corporations. The chief attributes of sovereignty—the rights of war and peace, of coinage, of holding armies and navies, of issuing bills of credit, of foreign relations, of regulating and taxing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has come into use in small, outboard-powered commercial fishing skiffs, but, unfortunately, these boats usually are modeled after the primitive flatiron skiff ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... used to set traps all the Fall and Winter, and we, with the natural tendency of boys to imitate whatever is wild and primitive, used to set traps also. To tell the truth, however, the hares appeared to have a way of going into the negroes' traps, rather than into ours, and the former ...
— The Long Hillside - A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... For it is a principle of universal law[o], that the natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former: for this natural allegiance was intrinsic, and primitive, and antecedent to the other; and cannot be devested without the concurrent act of that prince to whom it was first due. Indeed the natural-born subject of one prince, to whom he owes allegiance, may be entangled by ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone


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