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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


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"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books



... old ladies were not of the quaint type, nor was their home picturesque. The place and the people were merely old-fashioned, and they were almost primitive in their ways. They were kind-hearted and hospitable, but they were of the rugged New England class that has lost the charm of its ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... The primitive and popular form in which the superstition had probably lived on uninterruptedly from the time of the Romans, was the art of the witch(strege).The witch, so long as she limited herself to mere divination, might be innocent enough. were it not that the transition from prophecy ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... thanks to the very effective policing of the park by two troops of United States Cavalry. Two regiments could not entirely prevent poaching, but two troops were very successful, and the boys had found sections of the American Wonderland exactly as primitive as when the lonely trapper Coulter made his famous journey ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... of the healing art in Ancient Rome is shrouded in uncertainty. The earliest practice of medicine was undoubtedly theurgic, and common to all primitive peoples. The offices of priest and of medicine-man were combined in one person, and magic was invoked to take the place of knowledge. There is much scope for the exercise of the imagination in attempting to follow the course of early man in his efforts to ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... is supposed to belong, in theory at least, to that primitive era; but it is not necessary to go back further than the feudal period to look for a man who never has known a will above his own. Donatello seizes Miriam's tormentor and casts him down the Tarpeian ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns


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