See also: ur-form

English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

From ur- (original) +‎ form.

Noun edit

urform (plural urforms)

  1. A basic or original form.
    Synonym: protoform
    • 2003, David M. Hopkin, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture:
      Then by careful comparison they constructed a genealogy, finally deriving the outline of the ur-form, from which all other variants stemmed.
    • 2007, Donald Haase, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales:
      Thus he finally was able to present some suppositions about a folktale's origins: the time and place, as well as the urform (basic or original form).
    • 2010, Rachel Cowgill, David Cooper, Clive Brown, Art and Ideology in European Opera:
      This Ur-form brings together the 'oriental' stasis of a non-Western drone, in the form of various pedal-points ... It maybe too much to argue that the Ur-form, as a hidden version of the oriental, is Djamileh's equivalent to Namouna's ironic []