Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Being or happening first in sequence of time; original.
- adj. Primary or fundamental: play a primordial role.
- adj. Biology Belonging to or characteristic of the earliest stage of development of an organism or a part: primordial cells.
- n. A basic principle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- First in order; earliest; original; primitive; existing from the beginning.
- In anatomy, primitive; formative; in a rudimentary or embryonic state: opposed to definitive, or final, completed, or perfected: as, the primordial skull of man is partly membranous, partly cartilaginous.
- In botany, first formed: applied to the first true leaves formed by a young plant, also to the first fruit produced on a raceme or spike.
- In geology, containing the earliest traces of life.
- Synonyms Prime, etc. See primary.
- n. A first principle or element.
Wiktionary
- adj. first, earliest or original
- adj. characteristic of the earliest stage of the development of an organism, or relating to a primordium
- adj. primeval
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. First in order; primary; original; of earliest origin.
- adj. Of or pertaining to the lowest beds of the Silurian age, corresponding to the Acadian and Potsdam periods in American geology. It is called also
Cambrian , and by many geologists is separated from the Silurian. - adj. Originally or earliest formed in the growth of an individual or organ
- n. A first principle or element.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having existed from the beginning; in an earliest or original stage or state
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Late Latin prīmōrdiālis, from Latin prīmōrdium, origin : prīmus, first; see per1 in Indo-European roots + ōrdīrī, to begin to weave; see ar- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“He goes back to the first link, or to what he calls primordial generation.”
“The issue was exponential growth in primordial populations.”
“Paul Davies says: "The key to existence will be found not in primordial sludge, but in the nanotechnology of the living cell.”
“Democritus called his primordial element an atom; Anaxagoras, too, conceived a primordial element, but he called it merely a seed or thing; he failed to christen it distinctively.”
A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume I: The Beginnings of Science
“It’s not like these factors manifest themselves in primordial physical traits.”
“It is what Virginia Woolf called the primordial ooze – that fertile clay that we make things out of as writers.”
“But by studying small galaxies near the outer fringes of the Milky Way galaxy, the pair concluded that galaxies grew by swallowing smaller galaxies, so-called primordial fragments.”
The Washington Post: Leonard Searle, 79, dies; astronomer was former Carnegie Observatories director
“The paper does nothing to “oust” the so called primordial soup, it does add another potential energy source to the prebiotic system but its just another version of the hydrothermal energy systems that have been around for years.”
'Primordial Soup' Ousted from the Origin of Life?!? - The Panda's Thumb
“Racism and economic instability count high on the list of issues, but beneath virtually all of the causes there is a fundamental problem with external authority, in most cases (I would be willing to bet), resulting from primordial, that is, "childhood", abuse and unsuccessful attempts to declare and achieve personal freedom from an abusive parent or other adult.”
“First there was the sixteenth-century kabbalist Isaac Luria's notion of "tzimtzum," that is, the primordial kenotic space of Divine contraction out of which the pairs of opposites constituting the universe were said to arise.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘primordial’.
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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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RitaJKing's list
transparency
shimmer, fantastical, sansula, rapture, melancholy, obviated, parenthetically, apoplexy, indelible, pillory, demagogues, quark and 41 more...
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