Definition of "rudiment" [ru•di•ment]

• A fundamental element, principle, or skill, as of a field of learning. Often used in the plural. (noun)
• Something in an incipient or undeveloped form. Often used in the plural: the rudiments of social behavior in children; the rudiments of a plan of action. (noun)
• Biology An imperfectly or incompletely developed organ or part. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His is a strain of conceptualist evanescence that is highly material in its rudiment - a matter of celluloid disintegrated into acrylic emulsion."
• "The capacity to ponder works of art and to say something which enlarges our conception of their value, or gives them a fresh relevance, is the rudiment of criticism as an art."
• "The serious writer,  his past fogged by reckless existentialist thought, recognised the Nietzschean rudiment and smiled knowingly."