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• n  a person who belongs to an early stage of civilization
• n  a mathematical expression from which another expression is derived
• n  a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms
  `pick' is the primitive from which `picket' is derived
• s  belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness
  primitive movies of the 1890s
  primitive living conditions in the Appalachian mountains
• s  little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier ancestral type
  primitive mammals
  the okapi is a short-necked primitive cousin of the giraffe
• s  used of preliterate or tribal or nonindustrial societies
  primitive societies
• s  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

• By 1920, the automotive was no longer a primitive experiment.
• This sort of thing may have happened on the primitive earth, where lightning was probably common.
• The humbling message of a good piece of primitive art is that some long-ago savage possessed sensibilities and skills that a modern artist, making art instead of magic, can top .

• primitive person
• crude
• rude
• archaic
• naive

News & Articles

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• Josh Linkner: When provoked, choose your response carefully
  Choose how you respond ... We all get provoked. An angry associate, a cranky customer, a snarling spouse. In these cases, the primitive part of our brain designed to protect us in the wild kicks in and our automatic response is to recklessly fire back.
  June 13, 2013 - Detroit Free Press
• Starved for Arms, Syria Rebels Make Their Own
  A clandestine network of primitive weapons plants stands as a signature of a militarily lopsided war.
  June 12, 2013 - New York Times
• Primitive artifact show scheduled
  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Mark Twain Lake will host the Primitive Artifacts Show at the M.W. Boudreaux Memorial Visitor Center on Saturday June 15.
  June 8, 2013 - The Hannibal Courier-Post

Quotes

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• Albert Einstein in Jewish Telegraphic Agency
  The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,Einstein wrote.
• Sergei Ivanov in Press TV
  NATO must figure out how to start "very primitive social economic life in Afghanistan," Ivanov said during a security conference in Singapore. "If we don't do that, any military presence will be in vain."
• Willem Dafoe in FOXNews
  That's what remains the most important,said Dafoe, 52. "That's what started the most important, and then I think everybody goes away from that for a little while. And then they come back to that. It's like a primitive impulse."