Pertaining to the beginning or origin; original; especially, having something else of the same kind derived from it, but not itself derived from anything of the same kind; first: as, the primitive church; the primitive speech.Characterized by the simplicity of old times; old-fashioned; plain or rude: as, a primitive style of dress.In grammar, noting a word as related to another that is derived from it; noting that word from which a derivative is made, whether itself demonstrably derivative or not.In biology: rudimentary; inceptive; primordial; beginning to take form or acquire recognizable existence: applicable to any part, organ, or structure in the first or a very early stage of its formation: as, the primitive cerebral vesicles (the rudiment of the brain, out of which the whole brain is to be formed). See cut at protovertebra.Primary or first of its kind; temporary and soon to disappear: opposed to definitive: as, the primitive aorta.In botany, noting specific types, in opposition to forms resulting from hybridization.In geology, of the earliest or supposed earliest formation: in the early history of geology noting the older crystalline rocks of which the age and stratigraphical relations were uncertain, and the fossils (where these had once been present) either entirely obliterated or rendered so indistinct by metamorphism of the strata in which they were embedded that their determination was a matter of doubt.a number whose pth power diminished by unity is the lowest power of it divisible by p.a number which satisfies the congruence x l (mod p) and no similar congruence of lower degree.Synonyms and Pristine, etc. See primary.n. An original or primary word; a word from which another is derived: opposed to derivative.n. An early Christian.n. In mathematics, a geometrical or algebraic form from which another is derived, especially an algebraic expression of which another is the derivative; an equation which satisfies a differential equation, or equation of differences, of which it is said to be the primitive (if it has the requisite number of arbitrary constants to form the solution of the differential equation, it is called the complete primitive: see complete); a curve of which another is the polar or reciprocal, etc.In the history of art, belonging to an early and not fully developed period.In group-theory, not imprimitive.n. [capitalized] In the fine arts, a craftsman or artist who belongs to an early or under-developed period; especially, in the history of European painting, those painters of Italy, Flanders, Germany, and France who flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, at the close of the medieval period and the beginning of the Renaissance. See painting, 1.n. A work of art produced by one of the primitives.
