1. Belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness
   "primitive movies of the 1890s";
   - crude, rude
    
2. Little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier ancestral type
   "primitive mammals"; "the okapi is a short-necked primitive cousin of the giraffe";
   - archaic
    
3. (anthropology) used of preliterate, tribal or nonindustrial societies
   "primitive societies"
    
4. (fine arts) of or created by one without formal training; simple or naive in style
   "primitive art such as that by Grandma Moses is often colourful and striking";
   - naive, naïve

1. A person who belongs to an early stage of civilization
   "The anthropologist studied the customs of primitives in remote areas";
   - primitive person
    
2. A mathematical expression from which another expression is derived
   "The students learned to identify the primitives in complex equations"
    
3. A word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms
   "‘pick’ is the primitive from which ‘picket’ is derived"
    
4. (computer graphics) a basic geometric shape like a point, line or triangle
   "3D models are built from geometric primitives"

Derived forms: primitives

See also: early, jackleg [US, informal], noncivilised [Brit], noncivilized, untrained

Type of: actor, doer, expression, formula, word, worker

Encyclopedia: Primitive