Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Being or happening first in sequence of time; original.
- adjective Primary or fundamental.
- adjective Biology Belonging to or characteristic of the earliest stage of development of an organism or a part.
- noun A basic principle.
from The Century Dictionary.
- 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 . - noun A first principle or element.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A first principle or element.
- adjective First in order; primary; original; of earliest origin.
- adjective (Geol.) 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. - adjective (Biol.) Originally or earliest formed in the growth of an individual or organ
- adjective (Bot.) the interior lining of a young vegetable cell.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
first ,earliest ororiginal - adjective biology
characteristic of theearliest stage of thedevelopment of anorganism , or relating to aprimordium - adjective
primeval - noun A
first principle orelement .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having existed from the beginning; in an earliest or original stage or state
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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He goes back to the first link, or to what he calls primordial generation.
Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright
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The issue was exponential growth in primordial populations.
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Paul Davies says: "The key to existence will be found not in primordial sludge, but in the nanotechnology of the living cell."
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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 1904
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It’s not like these factors manifest themselves in primordial physical traits.
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It’s not like these factors manifest themselves in primordial physical traits.
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It is what Virginia Woolf called the primordial ooze – that fertile clay that we make things out of as writers.
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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.
Leonard Searle, 79, dies; astronomer was former Carnegie Observatories director 2010
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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 2010
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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.
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