Primitive

5 definitions found

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

  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.
          [1913 Webster]

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

  Primitive \Prim"i*tive\, n.
     An original or primary word; a word not derived from another;
     -- opposed to derivative.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  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"

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

  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
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  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)