primitive type

primitive type (plural primitive types)

2. (computer science, idiomatic) A data type provided by a programming language as a basic building block, such as integer, character or Boolean.

   Antonym: composite type

   Hypernyms: data type < type

   Hyponyms: boolean, byte, character, double, float, integer, long, short

   Holonym: type system

   Coordinate terms: built-in type, abstract type, reference type, existential type, intersection type, linear type, union type

   Although assembly language has no primitive types in the way that high-level languages do, assemblers do provide directives to allocate and interpret blocks of memory in specific, low-level ways, highly dependent on the target processor architecture, which programmers can think of as being effectively like primitive types.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see primitive,‎ type: a crude, simplistic, and/or early kind (of a device or physical system).

   Hypernym: type

   Coordinate terms: prototype, archetype

   The television that existed in the 1920s was of a primitive type, but it paved the way for what would come later.