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urtext

[ ur-tekst, oor- ]

noun

, (sometimes initial capital letter)
  1. the original form of a text, especially of a musical composition.


Urtext

/ ˈuːrtɛkst /

noun

  1. the earliest form of a text as established by linguistic scholars as a basis for variants in later texts still in existence
  2. an edition of a musical score showing the composer's intentions without later editorial interpolation
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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Word History and Origins

Origin of urtext1

First recorded in 1950–55; ur- 3 + text
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Word History and Origins

Origin of urtext1

from ur- original + text
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Example Sentences

If 2022 had an urtext, though, it was “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which with 11 nominations and a clutch of influential guild awards is the presumed front-runner for best picture.

“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” by Helen Fielding, about a contemporary London singleton looking for love, is the urtext here.

He said, “We have an 18-volume set of the complete keyboard works in urtext editions; would you like one?”

In the history of underdog sports stories, I think I may have found the urtext: a dramatic true tale of unlikely triumph over adversity and the odds — by a team of plucky orphans no less — so primal and insistently button-pushing that it seems to have inspired all other similarly themed athletic fictions that came after it.

Over the years, this article would become famous, and then infamous, as the urtext of a very influential theory of policing.

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