[
US
/ˈpɹɪmətɪv, ˈpɹɪmɪtɪv/
]
[ UK /pɹˈɪmɪtˌɪv/ ]
[ UK /pɹˈɪmɪtˌɪv/ ]
NOUN
- a person who belongs to an early stage of civilization
-
a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms
`pick' is the primitive from which `picket' is derived - a mathematical expression from which another expression is derived
ADJECTIVE
-
little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier ancestral type
the okapi is a short-necked primitive cousin of the giraffe
archaic forms of life
primitive mammals -
of or created by one without formal training; simple or naive in style
primitive art such as that by Grandma Moses is often colorful and striking -
belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness
primitive movies of the 1890s
primitive living conditions in the Appalachian mountains
the crude weapons and rude agricultural implements of early man -
used of preliterate or tribal or nonindustrial societies
primitive societies
How To Use primitive In A Sentence
- By the 3rd millennium B.C., they had developed a primitive form of cost accounting, elaborate techniques of budgeting and planning, and calculative techniques for devising labor standards.
- The largest of these primitive ‘trees’ were giant lycopods reaching upwards of 20 meters, but most of the plants grew to less than a meter above the ground.
- Accordingly he compromised by saying that while the present world as it is is not eternal, it came from a primitive "hyle" or matter, which was eternal. A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy
- Many primitive societies attach existential weight to the names of things.
- They stood, without any respect for regularity, on each side of a straggling kind of unpaved street, where children, almost in a primitive state of nakedness, lay sprawling, as if to be crushed by the hoofs of the first passing horse. The Waverley
- The success of the barometer led to the development of primitive air pumps.
- Myles L. Miller, Scott S. Hughes, 2009, Mixing primitive and evolved olivine tholeiite magmas in the Eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho Scientific Articles on Yellowstone
- Furthermore, outgroup comparison (with macaques, for example) indicates that some of these characters are primitive for the cercopithecid clade that includes these species (Papionina). Archive 2006-06-01
- The sound of the human whistle, like that in the most primitive instrumental forms - a whistle fashioned from a hollow tube of wood or straw - is made by the turbulence generated in an airstream at the narrow orifice formed by pursing the lips.
- * In primitive conditions, given the unsually demanding task (compared to other mammals) of raising human babies, paternal investment in offspring is required. The Volokh Conspiracy » Interracial Marriage Rates Going Up