Primitive1. (a.) Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first; as, primitive innocence; the primitive church.
2. (a.) of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity; as, a primitive style of dress.
3. (a.) Original; primary; radical; not derived; as, primitive verb in grammar.
4. (n.) An original or primary word; a word not derived from another; -- opposed to derivative.
Thesaurus Entries
Bronze Age man, Gothic, Hominidae, Iron Age man, Neanderthal, Stone Age man, ab ovo, abecedarian, aboriginal, aborigine, ancestral, ancient, animal, antediluvian, antenatal, antepatriarchal, anthropoid, ape-man, archaic, atavistic, autochthon, autochthonous, barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, basal, basic, basilar, beginning, bestial, brutal, brutish, budding, bushman, cave dweller, caveman, central, childlike, coarse, cognate, constituent, constitutive, creative, crucial, crude, derivation, derivative, doublet, earliest, earliest inhabitant, early, elemental, elementary, embryonic, endemic, eponym, erstwhile, essential, etymon, fetal, first, first comer, fore, formative, former, fossil man, foundational, fundamental, generative, genetic, germinal, gestatory, gut, homebred, homegrown, hominid, humanoid, ill-bred, immemorial, impolite, in embryo, in its infancy, in ovo, in the bud, inaugural, inceptive, inchoate, inchoative, incipient, incunabular, indigene, indigenous, infant, infantile, initial, initiative, initiatory, introductory, inventive, late, local, local yokel, man of old, material, missing link, naive, nascent, natal, native, native-born, noncivilized, of the essence, old, olden, once, onetime, original, outlandish, parturient, past, patriarchal, persistent, postnatal, preadamite, preglacial, pregnant, prehistoric, prehistoric man, prehuman, prenatal, previous, primal, primary, primate, prime, primeval, primitive settler, primogenial, primoprimitive, primordial, prior, pristine, procreative, protogenic, protohistoric, protohuman, quondam, radical, raw, recent, root, rough, rough-and-ready, rude, rudimental, rudimentary, savage, seminal, simple, simplistic, sometime, substantial, substantive, then, troglodyte, troglodytic, uncivil, uncivilized, uncombed, uncouth, uncultivated, uncultured, underived, underlying, undeveloped, unkempt, unlicked, unpolished, unrefined, unschooled, unsophisticated, untamed, untaught, untrained, untutored, ur, vernacular, wild