Meaning

In a primeval manner; in or from the earliest times; originally..

Example Sentences

Some authors suppose that man primevally lived in single families; but at the present day, though single families, or only two or three together, roam the solitudes of some savage lands, they are always, as far as I can discover, friendly with other families inhabiting the same district.

When we rubbed along thus jovially, deeming life to be "a great and glorious thing," fat cows were well sold at £2 per head, and bullocks at £3. Certainly you could buy stores (or, as they primevally called them, "lean cattle") at from 10s. to 16s., prices which left a margin. The Messrs. Manifold bought a large number of bullocks from the Shelleys, of Tumut, at the latter price, somewhere about the year 1845. How they fattened at Purrumbeet and Leura may be imagined! They fetched top prices, but were not thought to pay so well as the early ripening station-breds, on which the 3M brand was thenceforth chiefly placed.

'Interesting, Doctor, is it not? It would be beautiful in a way, primevally beautiful—an idyll of the callow world when the rocks were jagged like molten lead thrown into water, the vegetation chiefly fungoid, and it was necessary to clip the wings of one's horned cattle. But for the man—he is a late, mongrel, low-grade production, with merely a few primitive impulses. '

Word Forms

• more primevally
• most primevally
• primaevally
• primævally

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When Should You Use Primevally?

Use primevally when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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