How to Use primal in a Sentence

primal

adjective
  • And at the end of the chorus, that whole primal sing-yell thing came out.
    Chris Willman, Variety, 18 Sep. 2022
  • The sense of being at once hunter and prey feels primal.
    Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, 17 Jan. 2023
  • Lewis unleashed the saints and demons of primal rock ‘n’ roll.
    Richard Corliss, Time, 28 Oct. 2022
  • And to me, that was like such a primal description of him.
    Alex Ritman, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Full moons are primal, to begin with, and Aries is ruled by Mars, the horny god of war.
    Sophie Saint Thomas, Allure, 25 Apr. 2022
  • On the way back to the city, Tiffan yelped in a primal scream—a cicada was on her knee.
    Ross Kenneth Urken, Scientific American, 14 June 2021
  • But there is something primal about the way humans look for a light in the dark.
    Susanna Schrobsdorff, Time, 11 Sep. 2021
  • When the win was secure, head coach Ben Brinkman turned to his bench and let out a primal scream.
    Don Norcross, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Jan. 2024
  • And yet, in the midst of futile attempts to grind out yardage on the ground, the game’s primal Cro-Magnon essence was fun to watch.
    Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 11 Sep. 2022
  • The whole movie, for me, is a bit of a primal scream against the carnival-like idiocy of the past six years.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 26 Dec. 2022
  • The primal feel of the knife has unleashed something in Shauna.
    Erin Qualey, Los Angeles Times, 9 Jan. 2022
  • The primal force of the fire draws pilgrims to the lips of the craters, and has drawn Weston around the world in chase of that initial eruption.
    Nina MacLaughlin, BostonGlobe.com, 13 July 2023
  • As a primal element of power, land has flowed from the weak to the strong for centuries.
    Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Nov. 2023
  • And the question of whether our obsession with it is as primal as thirst.
    John Anderson, WSJ, 28 June 2022
  • There’s something primal to having the controller in your hand and being in the world.
    Todd Martensgame Critic, Los Angeles Times, 15 Jan. 2023
  • The Children on the Hill takes us on a breathless journey to face the primal fears that lurk within us all.
    Sarah Yang, Sunset Magazine, 23 Oct. 2023
  • But the deeper throughline of The Stones and Brian Jones involves the primal wound of a prodigal son.
    Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Nov. 2023
  • These fish are aged in giant primal cuts with the bones intact.
    Joey Skladany, Southern Living, 30 July 2024
  • This is a primal scream of a movie, as the pieces above and a number of other Don’t Look Up reviews make clear.
    Andy Meek, BGR, 27 Dec. 2021
  • The most abstract or general primal is the belief in a good (vs. bad) world.
    Mark Travers, Forbes, 15 June 2022
  • The garden enables the woman to remember her primal bond with the land.
    Leo Barraclough, Variety, 7 Aug. 2023
  • In the stands, the fans roared, their fear converted into a vaguely primal sound.
    Rory Smith, New York Times, 9 Dec. 2022
  • And what the algorithm has figured out is how to play to your primal instinct.
    Alan Murray, Fortune, 5 May 2023
  • This can trigger the primal human response of fight or flight.
    Nadine Hack, Forbes, 12 Aug. 2022
  • That scene is so ominous and primal because of the sounds and the music at that point, and just the way their bodies are moving was kind of dark.
    Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Flavor and smell trigger something very primal in the brain.
    Jess Cording, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
  • And that helps to explain why Zep, 50 years on, still sound so raw and explosive and primal and volcanic.
    Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 4 Sep. 2021
  • You or your partner may be possessed by the primal urge to conquer and control.
    Tribune Content Agency, oregonlive, 5 July 2021
  • At the same time, the primal genius of the pole vault—the Calydonian boar—operates outside the realm of reason.
    Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2024
  • The recording is deeply primal, deeply personal, and never should have been declassified.
    Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 11 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'primal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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