elementary
/ɛlɪˈmɛnt(ə)ri
/adjective
1Relating to the rudiments of a subject: an elementary astronomy course...
- Courses start at £75 for a Fun Day during the week, going up to £299 for a four-day elementary pilot course at the weekend.
- Euclid also wrote Phaenomena which is an elementary introduction to mathematical astronomy and gives results on the times stars in certain positions will rise and set.
- Heinrich attended school in Mulhouse, receiving a reasonably good education up to the age of twelve, studying French and Latin in addition to elementary subjects.
1.1Of the most basic kind: the elementary rights of citizenship...
- Parents would rather sue the world and screw the responsibilities they took on the minute their bundle of joy was born rather than teach him basic, elementary, fundamental reasoning and sense.
- During the past 15 years, they have transformed Poland into a paradise for big business and the wealthy, while large parts of the population lack the most elementary basic needs.
- And if they would misrepresent even this most basic, elementary issue, why should I trust them on other, more important things?
Synonyms
basic, rudimentary, fundamental, basal;
primary, preparatory, introductory, initiatory, early;
essential, radical, underlying
rare rudimental
1.2Straightforward and uncomplicated: a series of elementary exercises...
- The elementary exercise of checking the stability of changes in annual deaths and discrepancies between places studied will sometimes be highly prudent.
- For one, Economics in One Lesson can be read by anyone who can perform elementary logical exercises in his mind.
- The French believed that the complex of traditional custom governing the social order could be replaced by simple, elementary rules deriving from the exercise of human reason and natural law.
Synonyms
easy, simple, straightforward, uncomplicated, undemanding, unexacting, effortless, painless, uninvolved, child's play, plain sailing;
rudimentary, facile, simplistic
informal as easy as falling off a log, as easy as pie, as easy as ABC, a piece of cake, easy-peasy, no sweat, kids' stuff
2Not decomposable into elements or other primary constituents.Another theoretical advantage of RFA is that it denatures viral proteins without a plume and its by products are elementary molecules and low molecular weight inert gases....
- It is hardly fanciful to say that, at the beginning of the century, scientific understanding was equated with reducing structures, including that of the mind, to their elementary constituents.
- Its perceptual configurations have been thought to have a special relevance to the emergence of formal artistic qualities which cannot be reduced to a measurable aggregate of more elementary constituents.
Derivatives
elementarily
elementariness
- Complex heterogeneity is not suppressed by any refinement of focus, nor are simplicity, autonomy, elementariness, ever approached.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'composed of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water'): from Latin elementarius, from elementum 'principle, rudiment' (see element). Current senses date from the mid 16th century.