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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.



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"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books



... There was that primitive steam-engine-ages back, in Greek times: a Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester's steam-engine 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton's steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the great Napoleon, made fun of it. There ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the Knowledge of what Colours may be produc'd by the Mixtures of Pigments so and so Colour'd. And (as we lately intimated) 'tis of advantage to the contemplative Naturalist, to know how many and which Colours are Primitive (if I may so call them) and Simple, because it both eases his Labour by confining his most sollicitous Enquiry to a small Number of Colours upon which the rest depend, and assists him to judge of the nature of particular compounded Colours, by shewing ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... farm and the workers are genuinely rustic, but not nearly so primitive as in the times that Mr. Burroughs most enjoys recalling. Oxen are of the past, the mowing-machine goes over the fields where formerly he labored with his scythe, stacks at which the cattle pull ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... first eight brethren of the 'Rose-cross' had power to cure all maladies; that, by means of the fraternity, the triple diadem of the pope would be reduced into dust; that they only admitted two sacraments, with the ceremonies of the primitive Church, renewed by them; that they recognised the Fourth Monarchy and the Emperor of the Romans as their chief and the chief of all Christians; that they would provide him with more gold, their treasures being inexhaustible, than the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... was there—men, women, the old and the young, in their nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the most rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the charlatans who place their ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne


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