ur-word
ur-word noun: an original or primal word; a protoword.
Noun
ur-word (plural ur-words)
- An original or primal word; a protoword.
- As "neither linguistically conceived experience nor speech-less experience," but rather as "the experience of the removal of the word" and in unity with the experience of the birth of the word," the "Ur-word" would correspond accordingly to the "Ur-sentence", [...]1997, Fritz Buri, The Buddha-Christ As the Lord of the True Self
- According to Hillis Miller, Hopkins supposed that, by a continuous process of subdivision, all words descend from a first original, an ur-word.2004, John Powell Ward, The Spell of the Song
Forms of ur-word
| plural | ur-words |
|---|---|
| alternative form | urword |
Origin of ur-word
From ur- (“original, primal”) + word. Compare Dutch oerwoord, German Urwort.
Questions about ur-word
- What does ur-word mean?
- Ur-word means an original or primal word; a protoword.
- What part of speech is ur-word?
- Ur-word is a noun.
- What is the plural of ur-word?
- The plural of ur-word is ur-words.
Words near ur-word in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ur-word (page history and authors). 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:
Cite this entry: “ur-word.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ur-word. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.