English edit

Etymology edit

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun edit

primordial soup (countable and uncountable, plural primordial soups)

  1. (informal, evolutionary theory) The state of the Earth's oceans at a very early time in the planet's history, during the early development of multicellular organisms.
  2. (figurative) a collection of ideas or things that gets refined over time
    • 1995, Nikolaos Zahariadis, Markets, States, and Public Policy[1], University of Michigan Press, →ISBN:
      While the number of ideas floating in this primordial soup is quite large , only a few ever receive serious consideration.
    • 2018, Vladimir Mirodan, The Actor and the Character[2], Taylor & Francis, →ISBN:
      Freud would place in this primordial soup Eros and Thanatos, the tensions between life and death instincts; Jung would stress identification with universal archetypes.

Translations edit

See also edit