Atavism

Quick meaning: Atavism is a noun meaning The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback.

Meaning

The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback.

More Meanings

1. The recurrence or reversion to a past behaviour, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence.
2. (sociology) Reversion to past primitive behavior, especially violence.

Example Sentences

I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity.

He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely primitive that he was of the type that came into the world before the development of the moral nature. He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.

Hence on false premises was built up that belief in spirits or invisible beings outside ourselves, which by some curious atavism was re-emerging in modern days among the less educated strata of mankind.

"...he traces the roots of objectless imperialism to three sources, each an atavism. Modern imperialism, according to Schumpeter, resulted from the combined impact of a "war machine", warlike instincts, and export monopolism".

Word Forms

• atavisms

Synonyms for atavism

Depending on context, synonyms include reversion, throwback.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include throwback, reversion, atavist, paedomorphy, palingenesis, pedomorphism.

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