Meaning of ATAVISM
| Pronunciation: | | 'atu`vizum
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 WordNet Dictionary |
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| | Definition: | | [n] a reappearance of an earlier characteristic |
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| | Synonyms: | | reversion, throwback |
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| | See Also: | | recurrence, return | |
| Webster's 1913 Dictionary |
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| | Definition: | | \At"a*vism\, n. [L. atavus an ancestor, fr. avus a
grandfather.]
(a) The recurrence, or a tendency to a recurrence, of the
original type of a species in the progeny of its
varieties; resemblance to remote rather than to near
ancestors; reversion to the original form.
(b) (Biol.) The recurrence of any peculiarity or disease of
an ancestor in a subsequent generation, after an
intermission for a generation or two.
Now and then there occur cases of what
physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an
ancestral type of character. --J. Fiske
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| Thesaurus Terms |
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| | Related Terms: | | aboriginality, affect memory, age, ancien regime, ancientness, anterograde memory, antiquity, backset, backward deviation, cobwebs of antiquity, collective memory, computer memory, disk memory, drum memory, dust of ages, eld, elderliness, eldership, emotional response, engram, falling back, great age, hoary age, hoary eld, information storage, inveteracy, kinesthetic memory, lapse, memory, memory bank, memory circuit, memory trace, mind, mneme, Mnemosyne, old age, old order, old style, oldness, primitiveness, primogeniture, primordialism, primordiality, race memory, recollection, recrudescence, recurrence, regression, relapse, remembrance, renewal, return, reversal, reverse, reversion, screen memory, senility, seniority, setback, skill, souvenir, tape memory, throwback, venerableness, verbal response, visual memory |
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