Urform

Alternative forms

• ur-form

Origin

From -("original") + ur + form.

Full definition of urform

Noun

1. A basic or original form; protoform.
• 2003, David M. Hopkin, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture:Then by careful comparison they constructed a genealogy, finally deriving the outline of the ur-form, from which all other variants stemmed.
• 2007, Donald Haase, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales:Thus he finally was able to present some suppositions about a folktale's origins: the time and place, as well as the urform (basic or original form).
• 2010, Rachel Cowgill, David Cooper, Clive Brown, Art and Ideology in European Opera:This Ur-form brings together the 'oriental' stasis of a non-Western drone, in the form of various pedal-points ... It maybe too much to argue that the Ur-form, as a hidden version of the oriental, is Djamileh's equivalent to Namouna's ironic ...