Primitive \Prim"i*tive\, a. [L. primitivus, fr. primus the
first: cf. F. primitif. See Prime, a.]
1. Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early
times; original; primordial; primeval; first; as,
primitive innocence; the primitive church. "Our primitive
great sire." --Milton.
[1913 Webster]
2. Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned;
characterized by simplicity; as, a primitive style of
dress.
[1913 Webster]
3. Original; primary; radical; not derived; as, primitive
verb in grammar.
[1913 Webster]
Primitive axes of coordinate (Geom.), that system of axes
to which the points of a magnitude are first referred,
with reference to a second set or system, to which they
are afterward referred.
Primitive chord (Mus.), that chord, the lowest note of
which is of the same literal denomination as the
fundamental base of the harmony; -- opposed to derivative.
--Moore (Encyc. of Music).
Primitive circle (Spherical Projection), the circle cut
from the sphere to be projected, by the primitive plane.
Primitive colors (Paint.), primary colors. See under
Color.
Primitive Fathers (Eccl.), the acknowledged Christian
writers who flourished before the Council of Nice, A. D.
325. --Shipley.
Primitive groove (Anat.), a depression or groove in the
epiblast of the primitive streak. It is not connected with
the medullary groove, which appears later and in front of
it.
Primitive plane (Spherical Projection), the plane upon
which the projections are made, generally coinciding with
some principal circle of the sphere, as the equator or a
meridian.
Primitive rocks (Geol.), primary rocks. See under
Primary.
Primitive sheath. (Anat.) See Neurilemma.
Primitive streak or Primitive trace (Anat.), an opaque
and thickened band where the mesoblast first appears in
the vertebrate blastoderm.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: First; original; radical; pristine; ancient; primeval;
antiquated; old-fashioned.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Primitive \Prim"i*tive\, n.
An original or primary word; a word not derived from another;
-- opposed to derivative.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
primitive
adj 1: belonging to an early stage of technical development;
characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness;
"the crude weapons and rude agricultural implements of
early man"; "primitive movies of the 1890s";
"primitive living conditions in the Appalachian
mountains" [syn: crude, rude]
2: little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier
ancestral type; "archaic forms of life"; "primitive
mammals"; "the okapi is a short-necked primitive cousin of
the giraffe" [syn: archaic]
3: used of preliterate or tribal or nonindustrial societies;
"primitive societies"
4: 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"
n 1: a person who belongs to early stage of civilization [syn: primitive
person]
2: a mathematical expression from which another expression is
derived
3: a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms;
"`pick' is the primitive from which `picket' is derived"
WordNet (r) 2.0
188 Moby Thesaurus words for "primitive":
Bronze Age man, Gothic, Hominidae, Iron Age man, Neanderthal,
Stone Age man, ab ovo, abecedarian, aboriginal, aborigine,
ancestral, ancient, animal, antediluvian, antenatal,
antepatriarchal, anthropoid, ape-man, archaic, atavistic,
autochthon, autochthonous, barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, basal,
basic, basilar, beginning, bestial, brutal, brutish, budding,
bushman, cave dweller, caveman, central, childlike, coarse,
cognate, constituent, constitutive, creative, crucial, crude,
derivation, derivative, doublet, earliest, earliest inhabitant,
early, elemental, elementary, embryonic, endemic, eponym,
erstwhile, essential, etymon, fetal, first, first comer, fore,
formative, former, fossil man, foundational, fundamental,
generative, genetic, germinal, gestatory, gut, homebred, homegrown,
hominid, humanoid, ill-bred, immemorial, impolite, in embryo,
in its infancy, in ovo, in the bud, inaugural, inceptive, inchoate,
inchoative, incipient, incunabular, indigene, indigenous, infant,
infantile, initial, initiative, initiatory, introductory,
inventive, late, local, local yokel, man of old, material,
missing link, naive, nascent, natal, native, native-born,
noncivilized, of the essence, old, olden, once, onetime, original,
outlandish, parturient, past, patriarchal, persistent, postnatal,
preadamite, preglacial, pregnant, prehistoric, prehistoric man,
prehuman, prenatal, previous, primal, primary, primate, prime,
primeval, primitive settler, primogenial, primoprimitive,
primordial, prior, pristine, procreative, protogenic,
protohistoric, protohuman, quondam, radical, raw, recent, root,
rough, rough-and-ready, rude, rudimental, rudimentary, savage,
seminal, simple, simplistic, sometime, substantial, substantive,
then, troglodyte, troglodytic, uncivil, uncivilized, uncombed,
uncouth, uncultivated, uncultured, underived, underlying,
undeveloped, unkempt, unlicked, unpolished, unrefined, unschooled,
unsophisticated, untamed, untaught, untrained, untutored, ur,
vernacular, wild
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
primitive
A function, operator, or type which is
built into a programming language (or operating system),
either for speed of execution or because it would be
impossible to write it in the language. Primitives typically
include the arithmetic and logical operations (plus, minus,
and, or, etc.) and are implemented by a small number of
machine language instructions.
(1995-05-01)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
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