Primeval

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Primeval \Pri*me"val\, a. [L. primaevus; primus first + aevum
     age. See {Prime}, a., and {Age}.]
     Belonging to the first ages; pristine; original; primitive;
     primary; as, the primeval innocence of man. "This is the
     forest primeval." --Longfellow.
     [1913 Webster]


  
           From chaos, and primeval darkness, came Light. --Keats.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  primeval
       adj : having existed from the beginning; in an earliest or
             original stage or state; "aboriginal forests"; "primal
             eras before the appearance of life on earth"; "the
             forest primeval"; "primordial matter"; "primordial
             forms of life" [syn: {aboriginal}, {primal}, {primaeval},
              {primordial}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  90 Moby Thesaurus words for "primeval":
     abecedarian, aboriginal, ancestral, ancient, antenatal,
     antepatriarchal, atavistic, autochthonous, basal, basic, beginning,
     budding, central, creative, crucial, early, elemental, elementary,
     embryonic, erstwhile, fetal, fore, formative, former, foundational,
     fundamental, generative, genetic, germinal, gestatory, humanoid,
     immemorial, in embryo, in its infancy, in ovo, in the bud,
     inaugural, inceptive, inchoate, inchoative, incipient, incunabular,
     infant, infantile, initial, initiative, initiatory, introductory,
     inventive, late, nascent, natal, old, olden, once, onetime,
     original, parturient, past, patriarchal, postnatal, preadamite,
     preglacial, pregnant, prehistoric, prehuman, prenatal, previous,
     primal, primary, prime, primitive, primogenial, primoprimitive,
     primordial, prior, pristine, procreative, protogenic,
     protohistoric, protohuman, quondam, radical, recent, rudimental,
     rudimentary, seminal, sometime, then, ur