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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



... breakwater of seaweed. The inhabitants, consisting of about forty men, women, and children, gathered on the beach to welcome them in front of their little stone-boxes of dwellings which were scattered about here and there. They appeared to be a primitive race, the descendants of two old men-of-war's men, who, having been discharged from the service at the end of the last century, had lived there ever since with wives whom they had brought from the Cape, their respective children and grandchildren ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... taught, so as not to be helpless without mother or sister,—and with the help of a needle and some thread the friendly girl gave him, he soon made of the packing-sheet a pair of trousers for Tommy, of a primitive but not unserviceable cut, and a shirt for himself, of fashion more primitive still. He managed it this way: he cut a hole in the middle of a piece of the stuff, through which to put his head, and another hole on ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... opportunities; the poetry independent of the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; Paradise Lost; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, natural beauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and forbidden topics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his episodes, his similes, and the tradition that he adopts concerning the fallen angels; the cosmography of Paradise Lost; its chronology; some difficulties ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... bodies would go to join the absent beloved, while the other remained at home. (In my "Exotics and Retrospectives," under the title "A Question in the Zen Texts," the reader will find a typical Chinese story on the subject,—the story of the girl Ts'ing.) Some form of the primitive belief in doubles and wraiths probably exists in every part of the world; but this Far Eastern variety is of peculiar interest because the double is supposed to be caused by love, and the subjects of the affliction to belong to the gentler sex.... ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... week it had been raining at Temple Camp, and the ground was soggy from the continuous downpour. The thatched roofs of the more primitive type of cabins looked bedrabbled, like the hair of a bather emerging from the lake, and the more substantial shelters were crowded with the overflow from these and from tents deserted by troops and patrols that had been ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh


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