primitivenessn.

1644 H. Hammond Of Resisting Lawfull Magistrate 57 I beseech Master Marshall to..read the passages, and consider how farre hee hath departed from the Primitivenesse, and Christianity of those examples.

1684 Def. Resol. Case of Consc. conc. Symbolizing w. Ch. Rome 30 Replying to those few lines that follow against the Primitiveness of our Episcopacy.

1707 P. Dujon Serm. Thanksgiving 16 The Christian Religion in Purity of Doctrine, in Primitiveness of Church-Government, in Decency of Worship..flourishes among them.

1737 J. Read Ess. Simony & Sacrilege 97 The very notion is Argumentum ad hominem, for the primitiveness of what I have advanced.

1798 W. Drysdale Sacred Script. Theory of Earth 148 Therefore, with the א before it, which signifies primitiveness, the first, or foremost, &c. the noun anglicised ‘Arrarat’ is literally the primitive resister, diverter, or turner away, of the waters.

1841 Southern Literary Messenger Feb. 155/2 She remained some months at Malta, living in the primitiveness of the apostolic age.

1856 D. M. Mulock John Halifax II. xii. 296 The folk in our valley, out of their very primitiveness, had more faith in the master.

1881 B. F. Westcott & F. J. A. Hort New Test. in Orig. Greek II. Introd. iii. 281 These gradations of primitiveness in corruption.

1920 Times Lit. Suppl. 18 Nov. 746/1 There is no reason why others should painfully confine themselves to his primitiveness, either of mind or of method.

1950 G. Murphy Let. 23 Apr. in G. Murphy et al. Lett. from Lost Generation (1991) 317 St. Trop. has lost all its primitiveness & is now a seriously ‘important’ watering-place.

1999 A. Martin in G. Tansey & J. D'Silva Meat Business xxi. 229 This sort of argument promotes an acceptance of values that define primitiveness as being the absence of modern technology.