How to use primitive in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective

Primitive means an original or primary word; a word not derived from another, as opposed to derivative. Example: “I used primitive hearts to decorate the quilt.”

Examples of primitive by meaning

nounPrimitive or primeval nature; the innate, instinctive element within a person; the deep, instinctive, precultural layer...

It may be that, living among primitive surroundings, the dormant primitive deep within the white man is drawn towards the absolute primitive in the aboriginal.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 54

nounNatural or premodern environment or conditions; life lacking modern technology and society.

Out there in the primitive, white-man Rust had made his tools out of the primitive, as these stone-age people were making excellent string from the primitive.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 113

nounAny of the simplest elements (instructions, statements, etc.) available in a programming language.

A write-what-where primitive allows the attacker to write arbitrary data wherever they want in the memory2021, Arti Noor, Abhijit Sen, Gaurav Trivedi, Proceedings of Emerging Trends and Technologies on Intelligent Systems: ETTIS 2021, page 26

adjectiveOf or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first.

primitive innocence; the primitive church
"The cranium is clearly plesiomorphic in overall form, presenting primitive traits shared by earlier hominins," the authors wrote.2025 September 27, Julia Jacobo, “Million-year-old skull could rewrite timeline of human origin, researchers say”, in ABC News, archived...

adjectiveOf or pertaining to or harking back to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity.

a primitive style of dress
By some paradoxical evolution rancour and intolerance have been established in the vanguard of primitive Christianity.1921, Ben Travers, chapter 4, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
The intermediate stations were of the most primitive type.1951 August, “The Why and the Wherefore: The West Sussex Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 573

adjectiveRelating to an art style characterized by asymmetrical shapes and faded colors.

I used primitive hearts to decorate the quilt.

adjectiveOriginal; primary; radical; not derived.

a primitive verb
The primitive root in "children" is "child."

adjectiveMost recent common ancestor (often hypothetical) of.

To these unrecorded languages we give names like Primitive Germanic (Primitive Slavic, Primitive Celtic, and so on).1933, Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Henry Holt, page 13

More sentences with primitive

Consider fish, who are apparently sentient yet cognitively extremely primitive in comparison with humans.From the entry sentient
In many vertebrates, the neurenteric canal connects the medullary tube and the primitive intestine.From the entry neurenteric
The Ackermann function is one of the simplest and earliest examples of a total computable function that is not primitive recursive.From the entry total
Primitive hematopoiesis occurs around day 7.5 postcoitus.From the entry postcoitus
In geometry, points and lines are primitive notions.From the entry primitive notion
Knowledge, the knowledge-firster contends, should be taken as an epistemic primitive.2019, Branden Fitelson, Rodrigo Borges, Cherie Braden, Themes from Klein: Knowledge, Scepticism, and Justification, Springer, →ISBN, page 5. From the entry firster
The matchbox he used to “dead drop” his film was serviceable but primitive.2019, Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief. From the entry dead drop
The Modular Games Benchmark currently contains two examples of gamemode primitives.2018, Benjamin Williams, James Jackson, Jason Hall, Christopher J. Headleand, “Modular Games AI Benchmark”, in Peter R. Lewis, Christopher…. From the entry gamemode
The quadball is one of the most versatile primitives in SWID.2017 July 21, Shyam Venugopal, “To Globe or to Quadball, that is the Question”, in The SOLIDWORKS Blog. From the entry quadball
Autoboxing involves the dynamic allocation of memory and initialization of an object for each primitive.2014, Robert Liguori, Patricia Liguori, Java 8 Pocket Guide, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 28. From the entry autoboxing
The most primitive was wading into shallow water and collecting the mussels by hand.2012, Lisa Knopp, “Mississippi Harvest” (chapter 3), in What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte…. From the entry pollywog
The anapsid skull: snub-nosed like an artillery shell, shockingly powerful and primitive.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 186. From the entry anapsid
Under the hood, Mosaic is primitive by today's standards, but it's design is recognizable.2010 September 2, Niraj Chokshi, “The Stagnant History of the Browser Interface: A Retrospective”, in The Atlantic. From the entry under the hood
Strings are by far the most common primitive that you will use.2009, Justin Seitz, Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers. From the entry fuzzable
The abstracted metadata are represented in the multilevels of primitive metadata, composite metadata, and personalized metadata.2008, Ismail Khalil, Handbook of Research on Mobile Multimedia, Second Edition, page 723. From the entry multilevels
Are you speaking English or is that some primitive grunting language?2008, Victoria Forester, The Girl Who Could Fly, page 121. From the entry unga bunga
The cells of the primitive embryoblast differentiate into two layers, the epiblast and the hypoblast.2006, Cynthia S. Cook, Kathleen K. Sulik, Kenneth W. Wright, “1: Embryology”, in Kenneth W. Wright, Peter H. Spiegel, Lisa Thompson…. From the entry epiblast
A primitive concept is essential to the representation of the specialty.2005, Rolf Engelbrecht, A. Geissbuhler, C. Lovis, Connecting Medical Informatics and Bio-Informatics. From the entry primitive concept
A defined concept is built from one or more primitive concepts and one or more relationships.2005, Rolf Engelbrecht, A. Geissbuhler, C. Lovis, Connecting Medical Informatics and Bio-Informatics. From the entry primitive concept
However, the multibox tag is mapped to an array of strings or an array of other primitives.2005, Budi Kurniawan, Struts Design and Programming: A Tutorial, page 88. From the entry multibox
Presolar grains were isolated in primitive meteorites only 15 years ago.2004 March 5, Ann N. Nguyen, Ernst Zinner, “Discovery of Ancient Silicate Stardust in a Meteorite”, in Science, volume 303, number 5663…. From the entry stardust
This is a primitive survival instinct to guard against predators and potential danger.2004, Irfan Ahmad, Digital and Conventional Dental Photography, page 72. From the entry survival instinct
Good examples are horseshoe crabs, coelacanth fish, crocodiles, opossums, and primitive lampshells (linguloid brachiopods).2001, J. William Schopf, Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth's Earliest Fossils, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 212. From the entry bradytelic
We now show that the primitive n-th roots of unity generate the other n-th roots of unity.2001, Jean-Pierre Tignol, Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations, World Scientific, page 89. From the entry root of unity
More molecular data for other primitive heterodonts are needed to test this result, especially Crassatelloidea and Lucinoidea.2000, D. C. Campbell, “Molecular Evidence on the Evolution of the Bivalvia”, in E[lizabeth] M. Harper, J[ohn] D[avid] Taylor, J. A. Crame…. From the entry heterodont
According to the Gauss lemma, the product of primitive polynomials is primitive.2000, Jun-ichi Igusa, An Introduction to the Theory of Local Zeta Functions, American Mathematical Society, page 1. From the entry primitive polynomial
Any changes to the text were made with a primitive scratch-out.1998, Dovid Rossoff, Where Heaven Touches Earth, page iii. From the entry scratch-out
Only when “eobionts”—primordial organisms equipped with a primitive metabolism—began to multiply efficiently was this material used up.1993, Manfred Eigen, Ruthild Winkler, Laws of the Game…. From the entry eobiont

Meaning of primitive

noun An original or primary word; a word not derived from another, as opposed to derivative.
noun A member of a primitive society.
noun Primitive or primeval nature; the innate, instinctive element within a person; the deep, instinctive, precultural layer of human nature.

Full definition of primitive

Questions about primitive in a sentence

How do you use primitive in a sentence?: Primitive is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “I used primitive hearts to decorate the quilt.”
What is a short sentence with primitive?: “a primitive verb”
What does primitive mean?: Primitive means an original or primary word; a word not derived from another, as opposed to derivative.

Adapted from Wiktionary: primitive (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use primitive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/primitive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.