atavistic
of, relating to, or characterized by atavism; reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type.
Origin of atavistic
1Other words from atavistic
- at·a·vis·ti·cal·ly, adverb
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use atavistic in a sentence
So far, Uncle and Mary are still having it out atavistically in my foreconscious.
Bizarre | Lawton MackallCivilised mankind does not in any great measure take back atavistically to the upper-barbarian habit of mind.
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays | Thorstein VeblenThe forehead was atavistically low, the cheek bones very prominent, the nose wide and flat, the lips loose and thick.
Daughter of the Sun | Jackson GregoryIt is in the Balkans that all ethnic distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail anachronistically and atavistically.
After the Rain | Sam VakninIt is not likely to show itself atavistically in the children.
Woman | William J. Robinson
British Dictionary definitions for atavistic
/ (ˌætəˈvɪstɪk) /
of or relating to reversion to a former or more primitive type
Derived forms of atavistic
- atavistically, adverb
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
Scientific definitions for atavistic
[ ăt′ə-vĭs′tĭk ]
Relating to an inherited trait that reappears in an individual after being absent from a strain of organism for several generations. Atavistic traits were formerly thought to be throwbacks to ancestral types but are now known to be due to the inheritance of a pair of recessive genes.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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