all life on Earth supposedly came from a primordial ooze in existence many millions of years ago

Recent Examples on the Web

While some economists imagine primordial villages and basic agricultural systems where birds are exchanged for flowers to illustrate the history of money, Abel and Bernanke come up with something much more immediate: The economist is hungry. Matthew Zeitlin, The New Republic, "How David Graeber Changed the Way We See Money," 4 Sep. 2020

The black holes could be primordial, having hung around since the maelstrom of the early universe before the first stars were born. Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, "Middleweight black holes finally found but they pose a puzzle," 2 Sep. 2020

The typical explanation is that life emerged from a bunch of organic molecules slamming into each other in a roiling primordial ooze and gradually formed more complex molecules. Daniel Oberhaus, Wired, "A Ball of Bacteria Survived for 3 Years ... in Space!," 26 Aug. 2020

In northeastern Wyoming, peat that settled 60 million years ago in primordial bogs compressed into a vast seam of coal just under the surface. Doug Struck, The Christian Science Monitor, "Power pivot: What happens in states where wind dethrones King Coal?," 21 Aug. 2020

The 30 kilograms of primordial leftovers from Aguas Zarcas hold similar promise. Joshua Sokol, Science | AAAS, "An unusual meteorite, more valuable than gold, may hold the building blocks of life," 13 Aug. 2020

This almost superhuman transcendence of misfortune, this ability to raise yourself out of your primordial pain toward the heavens, is the prototype for the American Dream. Soraya Roberts, Longreads, "Regarding the Pain of Oprah," 10 Aug. 2020

The Incas built more than 80 temples on an island in the lake, where their origin myth said the sun god was born and their primordial ancestors emerged from a rock. National Geographic, "For women and voting, the fight isn't over," 10 Aug. 2020

The youngest of five siblings from Nagpur, India, Amage was born with primordial dwarfism, a rare genetic condition resulting in small body size. Emily Strohm, PEOPLE.com, "Meet the World’s Shortest Woman: 26-Year-Old Actress Jyoti Amage," 31 July 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'primordial.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.