atavism means the reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback. It carries an Arena rating of 1705, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, atavism ranks #781 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,368 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #1,541 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #2,576 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
atavism is pronounced /ˈætəˌvɪzəm/.
Why “atavism” is a great word
The reappearance in an organism of a trait from a remote ancestor after several generations of absence. From French atavisme, from Latin atavus ("ancestor, forefather"), from at- ("beyond, back") + avus ("grandfather"). Unlike "reversion," a general term for returning to a prior state, or the informal "throwback," atavism carries the specific, unsettling weight of biological or behavioral archaeology. It is the vestigial claw on a modern chicken, the sudden emergence of a recessive pelt in a litter of domesticated dogs, or the irrational, cold instinct that surfaces in a civilized mind—a ghost in the machine of progress, whispering that the past is never fully bred out.
Etymology
Borrowed from French atavisme.. By surface analysis, at- (“to”) + Latin av(us) (“grandfather, ancestor”) + -ism. Compare ancestorism.
noun
- The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback.e.g.“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.” — 1904, Jack London, chapter 10, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:
- The recurrence or reversion to a past behaviour, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence.
- A reversion to past primitive behavior, especially violence.e.g.“I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity.” — 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXVI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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