Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Primary; first in time, order, or importance; original; primitive.
- [capitalized] In geology, the earliest of H. D. Rogers's divisions of the Paleozoic series of Pennsylvania, equivalent to the Potsdam sandstone of the New York Survey.
- In natural history, specifically, of or pertaining to the kingdom Primalia. Synonyms Prime, etc. See
primary .
Wiktionary
- adj. Being the first in time, or history.
- adj. Being of greatest importance; primary.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. First; primary; original; chief.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. serving as an essential component
- adj. having existed from the beginning; in an earliest or original stage or state
Etymologies
- Medieval Latin prīmālis, from Latin prīmus, first; see per1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“I like using the term primal scream in advocating the end of homelessness, because it instills a sense of desperation in an economic system that is sadly spewing out homelessness in cities around the world.”
“But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe as the primal and authentic:”
“There's a mental picture for you - Ahmadinejad in primal scream therapy with Lindsay Lohan. paschendale191 …”
“Humans have twin primal urges: to fear change for themselves yet want it for others.”
USATODAY.com - The more things change in sports, do things stay same?
“She could comprehend certain primal and analogous characteristics in a hungry wolf-dog or a starving man, and predicate lines of action to be pursued by either under like conditions.”
“She hadn't told me any of that, but apparently, my intuition was spot on because at that point Joanne curled up in a ball and started sobbing uncontrollably and nearly dry heaving in what I can best describe as primal agony.”
The Huffington Post: Mark Goulston, M.D.: Is Daddy An A-Hole?
“So that when we come to look at liberalism in a critical spirit, we have to expect that there will be a discrepancy between what I have called the primal imagination of liberalism and its present particular imagination.”
“In the last years, the death of argument within the Republican Party -- the attempted enforcement of orthodoxy, defined as a primal form of loyalty to presidential will -- has cost it and the country dearly.”
Robert F. Bauer: Richard Rorty and the Riches of Progressive Argument
“This poetic rumination draws a more nuanced conception of women's rights into an idea that might be described as the primal theme of Godard's 60s work: the mutual destruction that exists between men and women, especially in love.”
“Perhaps the pain of clowns is a little more primal, which is one good reason for people who work in comedy to give clowns a pass.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘primal’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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•Public List: Pommelions and Papermills
Started on pommelion--a place for all those words that feature P, then M, then L inside them. Somewhere.
pommelion, papermill, pimple, pemoline, pall mall, pell-mell, peppermill, paleomammalogy, philomelian, pummel, pimpernel, pimpmobile and 32 more...
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