primevally

English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

From primeval +‎ -ly.

Adverb edit

primevally (comparative more primevally, superlative most primevally)

In a primeval manner; in or from the earliest times; originally.
- 1871, Charles Darwin, “Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals—continued”, in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. […], volume I, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, Part I (On the Descent of Man), page 84:
  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.
- 1896, Rolf Boldrewood, Old Melbourne Memories, Chapter 9:
  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.
- 1905, Henry C. Rowland, The Mountain of Fears, Two Savages:
  '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. '

References edit

“primevally”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.