English

Alternative forms

• ur-form

Noun

urform ‎(plural urforms)

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 [...]