primordial soup

noun

: a mixture of organic molecules in evolutionary theory from which life on earth originated

Examples of primordial soup in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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The most exciting — and controversial — possibility dates back to a 1971 proposal from the British physicist Stephen Hawking: that black holes arose in the primordial soup of the Big Bang itself. Quanta Magazine, 12 Sep. 2025 Then just add liquid water to its surface and let the primordial soup simmer for millions of years as energy from starlight gradually cooks up the chemical building blocks of life. Emma R. Hasson, Scientific American, 17 Aug. 2025 Light Galore Our current understanding of the early universe’s development goes something like this: After the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, the cosmos expanded and the primordial soup of subatomic particles cooled. The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 30 Jan. 2025 At a much earlier time, 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the roiling primordial soup of protons, electrons, and photons cooled enough for the particles to team up and form neutral hydrogen atoms. Bydaniel Clery, science.org, 10 Sep. 2024 See All Example Sentences for primordial soup

Word History

First Known Use

1962, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of primordial soup was in 1962

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Cite this Entry

“Primordial soup.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/primordial%20soup. Accessed 6 Oct. 2025.

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