atavism
Pronunciation
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈætəˌvɪzəm/
atavism
- The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence.
- The recurrence or reversion to a past behaviour, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence.
- (sociology) Reversion to past primitive behavior, especially violence.
- 1933, George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, Chapter XXXVI,
- 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, George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, Chapter XXXVI,
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002