- being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world: primitive forms of life.
- early in the history of the world or of humankind.
- characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development: primitive toolmaking.
- (no longer in technical use) of or relating to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors.
- unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized: primitive passions.
- being in its earliest period; early: the primitive phase of the history of a town.
- old-fashioned: primitive ideas and habits.
- simple; unsophisticated: a primitive farm implement.
- crude; unrefined: primitive living conditions.
- Linguistics.
- of or relating to a form from which a word or other linguistic form is derived; not derivative; original or radical.
- of or relating to a protolanguage.
- of or relating to a linguistic prime.
- primary, as distinguished from secondary.
- Biology.
- rudimentary; primordial.
- noting species, varieties, etc., only slightly evolved from early antecedent types.
- of early formation and temporary, as a part that subsequently disappears.
- someone or something primitive.
- Fine Arts.
- an artist of a preliterate culture.
- a naive or unschooled artist.
- an artist belonging to the early stage in the development of a style.
- a work of art by a primitive artist.
- Mathematics.
- a geometric or algebraic form or expression from which another is derived.
- a function of which the derivative is a given function.
- the form from which a given word or other linguistic form has been derived, by either morphological or historical processes, as take in undertake.
- of or belonging to the first or beginning; original
- characteristic of an early state, esp in being crude or uncivilized
- denoting or relating to a preliterate and nonindustrial social system
- biology
- of, relating to, or resembling an early stage in the evolutionary development of a particular group of organisms
- another word for primordial (def. 3)
- showing the characteristics of primitive painters; untrained, childlike, or naive
- pertaining to magmas that have experienced only small degrees of fractional crystallization or crystal contamination
- of, relating to, or denoting rocks formed in or before the Palaeozoic era
- denoting a word from which another word is derived, as for example hope, from which hopeless is derived
- of, relating to, or associated with a minority group that breaks away from a sect, denomination, or Church in order to return to what is regarded as the original simplicity of the Gospels
- a primitive person or thing
- an artist whose work does not conform to traditional, academic, or avant-garde standards of Western painting, such as a painter from an African or Oceanic civilization
- a painter of the pre-Renaissance era in European painting
- a painter of any era whose work appears childlike or untrained
- a work by such an artist
- a word or concept from which another word or concept is derived
- a curve, function, or other form from which another is derived
