ur-mind

noun

The primitive, subconscious, latent, or unconscious mind; instinct.

Meanings

nounur-mind (plural ur-minds)

plural ur-minds · alternative ur mind

  1. The primitive, subconscious, latent, or unconscious mind; instinct.

    This Ur-mind also contains information about the future, information available to everyone — but particularly the novelist.

    2003, Angela Hague, Fiction, intuition, & creativity
    3 more examples

    […] whose deification of personal vision, whose wildly romantic glorification of the inner light, first supplied Western thought with an imposing conceptual apparatus by which to justify its habitual excursions into the dark corners of the ur-mind.

    1942, William Allison Shimer, Phi Beta Kappa, The American scholar

    […] the non-specific 'deep structure', a deep structure that presumably lies so far down in the ur-mind as to realize itself again and again in all forms of cultural activity, basket-making no less than myth-making, cooking no less than love-making.

    1989, Richard Ellmann, Susan Dick, Essays for Richard Ellmann: Omnium Gatherum

    From the muse, from god, from literature itself, the subconscious mind, the Ur-mind, some kind of Jungian other, from the reptilian brain. Who knows? I ride horses a lot, and there's a lot that you feel coming from the horse when you're riding it.

    1999, Susan K. Perry, Writing in flow: keys to enhanced creativity

Origin

From ur- (“original, primitive”) + mind.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

ur-mind. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ur-mind

MLA

“ur-mind.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ur-mind. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ur-mind,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ur-mind.

Source: ur-mind on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.