primal

1. not comparableBeing the first in time or in history.

   primal man

   Synonyms: aboriginal, primaeval, primeval, primordial

2. not comparableOf greatest importance; primary.

   “I think I trigger a lot of their primal rage,” Mr. Greenwald said, referring to Brazilians who support the president. “They view me as someone who deserves to be punished.”

   2020 January 25, Ernesto Londoño, Letícia Casado, “Glenn Greenwald in Bolsonaro’s Brazil”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2020

   3 more examples

   The most primal motion of all, of course, is vertical—a steady eternal fall into the infinity of space; speed cannot be ascribed to them, since, given the infinity of space and the absolute steadiness of the fall, no [relative] standard for it exists at all.

   1870, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche: The Preplatonic Philosophers, page 127

   “We don’t know what life is. We do know what death is. It is change of habitat of ghost. I wish we had some sepate or house of bishops to tabulate these concepts. The law of togetherness and apartness is the most primal concept of life, Hence a crystal belongs as legitimately to the sphere of life as any seraph that blazes before the throne.” And so on for dreary pages.

   1873, The Lancet 1873: Issue 2625, Elsevier Limited, page 882

   But in the United States the whole movement has hardly reached the stage of toleration. It seems difficult for the great body of well-meaning, native-born citizens of mature vears, who are not of the wage-earning order, to understand how enormous have been the changes in the very frame-work of industrial life, and in the simplest and most primal facts affecting the social conditions in which the wage- workers, especially of the great cities and manufacturing sections of the land, now find themselves, year by year, more and more completely environed. The successful middle-aged American carries within his memory, as a rule, associations as to his own early struggles quite at variance with those that would now wait on him were he about to enter the arena of competition, armed only with such forcesas his natural physical nowers, partial training, and moderately developed mental capacities, might afford him at this time. Failing to put himself in the other man’s place, the matured man of business is almost invariably narrow and unjust in his estimate of the motives and aims of the labor-union organizer. There is also a justifiable feeling against the effort to make metes and bounds in the way of class distinctions.

   1885, North American Review 1885-01: Volume 140, Issue 338, North American Review, pages 49–50

   Synonyms: primary

3. not comparablemeat tradeBeing one of the pieces of meat initially separated from the carcass during butchering, prior to division into smaller cuts.

plural primals

1. A primal cut (of meat).
2. The first element of something, especially the first letter of a word.

   DOUBLE ACROSTIC. My primals and finals are the same as the first crossword.

   1895, The Woman at Home, page 399

present singular third person primals · US participle present primaling · UK participle present primalling · US participle past primaled · US past primaled · UK participle past primalled · UK past primalled

1. intransitivemathematicsTo take part in primal therapy.

   Primaling on the infant level seems so genuinely babyish that the unsophisticated observer may mistake it for psychotic behavior.

   1982, Lawrence Edwin Abt, Irving R. Stuart, The Newer Therapies: A Sourcebook, page 369

   1 more example

   One of my patients told me of an acquaintance who primaled in the shopping center. Janov described a patient who primaled on the tennis court. Apparently, once initiated, patients primal in any place at any time for the rest of their lives.

   1979, The Journal of Orgonomy, volume 13, number 1, page 108