Word.ws English Dictionary

primordial

/pɹaɪˈmɔː.di.əl//pɹaɪˈmɔɹ.di.əl/

primordial adjective: first, earliest or original.

Adjective

primordial (not comparable)

  1. First, earliest or original.
    • the primordial facts of our intelligent naturea. 1857, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood...
    • As an archetypal image of primordial unity, the cosmic egg suggests that there is unity and fragmentation, eternity and time.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light:Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 9
  2. Characteristic of the earliest stage of the development of an organism, or relating to a primordium.
    • a primordial leaf; a primordial cell
  3. Primeval.
  4. Of an element or isotope: occurring primordially (on Earth) (i.e. inherited from when the Earth was formed); because it is stable, or radioactive but so long-lived that some is left over from when the Earth was formed. For example, primordial radioisotopes (T = half-life in years) include uranium-235 (T = 7×10⁸), potassium-40 (T = 1.25×10⁹), uranium-238 (T = 4.5×10⁹), and thorium-232 (T = 1.4×10¹⁰).

Noun

primordial (plural primordials)

  1. A first principle or element.
  2. A primordial condition or state.
    • With a horrified shriek she tore herself from Tarzan’s arms, and the ape-man turned just in time to ward with his arm a terrific blow that De Coude had aimed at his head. Once, twice, three times the heavy stick fell with lightning rapidity, and each blow aided in the transition of the ape-man back...1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 45

primordial meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

primordial in Hindi

आदिकालिक, आदिस्वरूपी

primordial in Tamil

தொடக்கத்திலுள்ள, மூலமுதலான, தரங்குன்றா, பழமையான

primordial in Marathi

आद्याधारित

primordial in Urdu

اصلی, ابتدائی, پہلا
More languagesFewer languages
primordial in Bengali
আদিম, মৌলিক
primordial in Malayalam
ആദ്യമേയുള്ള, ആദ്യമുണ്ടായ, പുരാതനമായ, ആദിയിലുണ്ടായ
primordial in Odia
ଆଦିମ
primordial in Nepali
आदिम

Examples of primordial in a sentence

  • He gave a tongue-in-cheek explanation of why the sky was blue, offering a theory about some primordial discount on light blue paint.
  • A popular form of Kali worshiped in Calcutta is Adya Shakti Kali, or Kali as primordial power.
  • The marriage ceremony was given primordial significance over folkloric pre-marriage engagement rituals and wild charivaris.

All 38 example sentences with primordial

Forms of primordial

pluralprimordials

Origin of primordial

From the Latin prīmōrdiālis (“of the beginning”). Compare primordium and -al.

Words formed from primordial

Phrases with primordial

Questions about primordial

What does primordial mean?
Primordial means first, earliest or original.
What is primordial in Hindi?
Primordial in Hindi is आदिकालिक, आदिस्वरूपी. See Primordial meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is primordial?
Primordial can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce primordial?
Primordial is pronounced /pɹaɪˈmɔː.di.əl/ (UK).

Words near primordial in the dictionary

  1. primoinfection
  2. primoinfections
  3. primoradial
  4. primordality
  5. primordia
  6. primordial
  7. primordial black hole
  8. primordial black holes
  9. primordial cell
  10. primordial cells
  11. primordial chaos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: primordial (page history and authors); primordial (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); primordial (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primordial (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); primordial (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primordial (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); primordial (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); primordial (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); primordial (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-primordial.ogg, En-us-primordial.ogg.

Cite this entry: “primordial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/primordial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.