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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Primitive \Prim"i*tive\, adjective [L. primitivus, fr. primus the first: cf. F. primitif. See {Prime}, adjective]
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.
2. Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity; as, a primitive style of dress.
3. Original; primary; radical; not derived; as, primitive verb in grammar.
{Primitive axes of co["o]rdinate} (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.
Syn: First; original; radical; pristine; ancient; primeval; antiquated; old-fashioned.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Primitive \Prim"i*tive\, noun An original or primary word; a word not derived from another; -- opposed to derivative.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
primitive
adjective
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"
noun
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)
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