Ur-word

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An original or primal word; a protoword.

    "As "neither linguistically conceived experience nor speech-less experience," but rather as "the experience of the removal of the word" and in unity with the experience of the birth of the word," the "Ur-word" would correspond accordingly to the "Ur-sentence", [...]"

Example

More examples

"As "neither linguistically conceived experience nor speech-less experience," but rather as "the experience of the removal of the word" and in unity with the experience of the birth of the word," the "Ur-word" would correspond accordingly to the "Ur-sentence", [...]"

Etymology

From ur- (“original, primal”) + word. Compare Dutch oerwoord, German Urwort.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.