primitive

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Not derived from something else; primary or basic.
2. adj. Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval.
3. adj. Being little evolved from an early ancestral type.
4. adj. Characterized by simplicity or crudity; unsophisticated: primitive weapons. See Synonyms at rude.
5. adj. Anthropology Of or relating to a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially one that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity: primitive societies.
6. adj. Linguistics Serving as the basis for derived or inflected forms: Pick is the primitive word from which picket is derived.
7. adj. Linguistics Being a protolanguage: primitive Germanic.
8. adj. Relating or belonging to forces of nature; elemental: primitive passions.
9. adj. Of or created by an artist without formal training; simple or naive in style.
10. adj. Of or relating to the work of an artist from a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially a culture that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
11. adj. Of or relating to late medieval or pre-Renaissance European painters or sculptors.
12. adj. Biology Occurring in or characteristic of an early stage of development or evolution.
13. n. Anthropology A person belonging to a nonindustrial, often tribal society, especially a society characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
14. n. An unsophisticated person.
15. n. One that is at a low or early stage of development.
16. n. One belonging to an early stage in the development of an artistic trend, especially a painter of the pre-Renaissance period.
17. n. An artist having or affecting a simple, direct, unschooled style, as of painting.
18. n. A self-taught artist.
19. n. A work of art created by a primitive artist.
20. n. Linguistics A word or word element from which another word is derived by morphological or historical processes or from which inflected forms are derived.
21. n. Linguistics A basic and indivisible unit of linguistic analysis. Also called prime.
22. n. Mathematics An algebraic or geometric expression from which another expression is derived.
23. n. Computer Science A basic or fundamental unit of machine instruction or translation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. 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.
2. Characterized by the simplicity of old times; old-fashioned; plain or rude: as, a primitive style of dress.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Primary or first of its kind; temporary and soon to disappear: opposed to definitive: as, the primitive aorta.
6. In botany, noting specific types, in opposition to forms resulting from hybridization.
7. 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. Many of the rocks formerly called primitive are now known to be more or less thoroughly metamorphosed Paleozoic strata, and in the progress of geological investigation they have been referred to their place in the series of stratified formations. Other so-called primitive rocks belong to the azoic or archæan series (as this latter term was and still is used by Dana)—that is, they unmistakably underlie unconformably the oldest known fossiliferous strata. These azoic rocks are made up in part of eruptive masses, and in part of highly metamorphosed sedimentary deposits which, so far as can be determined from existing evidence, were deposited before the appearance of life on the earth. As there is much primitive rock of which the geological age has not as yet been fixed, it has been found convenient to designate this simply as crystalline or metamorphic; such rocks are, however, often called archæan; but this cannot be properly done until their infra-Silurian position has been established by observation.
8. a number whose pth power diminished by unity is the lowest power of it divisible by p.
9. a number which satisfies the congruence x l (mod p) and no similar congruence of lower degree.
10. Synonyms and Pristine, etc. See primary.
11. n. An original or primary word; a word from which another is derived: opposed to derivative.
12. n. An early Christian.
13. 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.
14. In the history of art, belonging to an early and not fully developed period.
15. In group-theory, not imprimitive.
16. 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.
17. n. A work of art produced by one of the primitives.

Wiktionary

1. n. An original or primary word; a word not derived from another, as opposed to derivative.
2. n. A member of a primitive society.
3. n. A simple-minded person.
4. n. computing, programming A data type that is built into the programming language, as opposed to more complex structures.
5. n. A basic geometric shape from which more complex shapes can be constructed.
6. n. mathematics A function whose derivative is a given function; an antiderivative.
7. adj. Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first.
8. adj. Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity.
9. adj. this sense?) Crude, obsolete.
10. adj. Original; primary; radical; not derived.
11. adj. biology Occurring in or characteristic of an early stage of development or evolution.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first.
2. adj. Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity.
3. adj. Original; primary; radical; not derived.
4. n. An original or primary word; a word not derived from another; -- opposed to derivative.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a person who belongs to an early stage of civilization
2. n. a mathematical expression from which another expression is derived
3. n. a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms
4. adj. of or created by one without formal training; simple or naive in style
5. adj. used of preliterate or tribal or nonindustrial societies
6. adj. little evolved from or characteristic of an earlier ancestral type
7. adj. belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness