Primitive
English Meaning
Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first; as, primitive innocence; the primitive church.
- Not derived from something else; primary or basic.
- Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval.
- Being little evolved from an early ancestral type.
- Characterized by simplicity or crudity; unsophisticated: primitive weapons. See Synonyms at rude.
- Anthropology Of or relating to a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially one that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity: primitive societies.
- Linguistics Serving as the basis for derived or inflected forms: Pick is the primitive word from which picket is derived.
- Linguistics Being a protolanguage: primitive Germanic.
- Relating or belonging to forces of nature; elemental: primitive passions.
- Of or created by an artist without formal training; simple or naive in style.
- Of or relating to the work of an artist from a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially a culture that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
- Of or relating to late medieval or pre-Renaissance European painters or sculptors.
- Biology Occurring in or characteristic of an early stage of development or evolution.
- Anthropology A person belonging to a nonindustrial, often tribal society, especially a society characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
- An unsophisticated person.
- One that is at a low or early stage of development.
- One belonging to an early stage in the development of an artistic trend, especially a painter of the pre-Renaissance period.
- An artist having or affecting a simple, direct, unschooled style, as of painting.
- A self-taught artist.
- A work of art created by a primitive artist.
- Linguistics A word or word element from which another word is derived by morphological or historical processes or from which inflected forms are derived.
- Linguistics A basic and indivisible unit of linguistic analysis. Also called prime.
- Mathematics An algebraic or geometric expression from which another expression is derived.
- Computer Science A basic or fundamental unit of machine instruction or translation.
