Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to or characterized by atavism; atavic.
Wiktionary
- adj. of the recurrence of a trait reappearing after an absence of one or more generations due to a chance recombination of genes.
- adj. of a throwback or exhibiting primitivism.
- adj. relating to earlier, more primitive behavior that returns after an absence.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. displaying characteristics of a previous cultural era or of a previous ancestral form; displaying atavism.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characteristic of an atavist
Examples
“Members of the audience actually gasped when Hayek referred to Socialism as 'atavistic' - the reversion to an older, more primitive form.”
Socialism as Primitivism, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Maybe they're just being atavistic, which is generally part of the successful business person's act anyway.”
The Huffington Post: Fortune 's Stanley Bing: How Not to Work a Cocktail Party
“But such cases are so infrequent that they may well be counted atavistic, that is, of the nature of a tendency to return to a previous merely animal condition.”
“But it divides between those whose feelings might be termed atavistic or revanchist and those who make a reasoned critique, in sorrow as much as anger, of Western policies - especially the Iraq war, the Kosovo affair from 1999 onwards, United States plans for theatre missile-defence, and, not least, the expansion of NATO.”
“Well, admittedly I had to look up "atavistic" and it means a "throwback", or old fashioned.”
“In a delivery style that was uncharacteristically fluent, he lambasted the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), describing them as "atavistic" and operating as if they are in the "dark ages".”
“I have come to the conclusion that certain types of people need scapegoats and sacrificial victims to satisfy some kind of atavistic sadism that compels them to attack what is beautiful and good.”
“Likewise, spending an hour or two wandering rows of nearly endless varieties of apple trees or a slope covered in lines of tidy blueberry bushes with the sun on your face, looking for ripe fruit with your kids, or even a date, is the kind of atavistic, wholesome good time that Wii hasn't gotten close to touching yet.”
“In this view, disputed by church leaders, the contest becomes a kind of atavistic zero-sum game.”
“Clearly, there's some kind of atavistic appeal at work here that scrapes directly from the very bottom of the barrel.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘atavistic’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 314 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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jeffrey.t.whitney's list
sartorial, sabbatarian, sagacious, desiccate, ersatz, insouciant, atavistic, luddite, crwth, obdurate, stentorian, ruminate and 51 more...
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Slam Fodder
Those words that will inevitable end up in a Slam Poem
feel free to challenge me!:)bumptious, gamekeeper, slamily, burbuliatorius, cryptomnesia, paradox, pulchritudinous, mimetic, anhedonia, skelf, rampike, furlough and 84 more...
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Eollodwyn's list
Favoritest Words Ever
abscond, draconian, wan, neophyte, defenestration, busker, sibilant, superfluous, facetious, zealot, auspicious, hubris and 9 more...
Nathon Hay atavistic guilt; throwback guilt Jun 2, 2011
chained_bear "With a faint atavistic sense of housewifeliness, I tucked a soft green pillow under his head."
—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 761 Jan 26, 2010
yarb Citation on berk. Jun 30, 2008
uselessness This word makes me want to study my genealogy and see if I have any famous ancestors I'm emulating. Jun 12, 2007