palingenesis

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The doctrine of transmigration of souls; metempsychosis.
2. n. Biology The repetition by a single organism of various stages in the evolution of its species during embryonic development.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A new or second birth or production; the state of being born again; regeneration.
2. n. In mod. biol., hereditary evolution, as distinguished from kenogenesis or vitiated evolution; ontogenesis true to heredity, not modified by adaptation; the “breeding true” of an individual organism with reference to its pedigree; the development of the individual according to the character of its lineage. See biogeny. Sometimes called palingeny.
3. n. The supposed production of animals either from a preëxistent living organism, on which they are parasites, or from putrescent animal matter.
4. n. In entomology, metaboly or metamorphosis; the entire transformation of an insect, or transition from one state to another, in each of which the insect has a different form.

Wiktionary

1. n. biology The apparent repetition, during the development of a single embryo, of changes that occurred previously in the evolution of its species.
2. n. Christian theology Spiritual rebirth through the transmigration of the soul in Christian baptism.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A new birth; a re-creation; a regeneration; a continued existence in different manner or form.
2. n. The passing over of the soul of one person or animal into the body of another person or animal, at the time of the death of the first; the transmigration of souls. Called also metempsychosis.
3. n. (Biol.) That form of development of an individual organism in which in which ancestral characteristics occurring during its evolution are conserved by heredity and reproduced, sometimes transiently, in the course of individual development; original simple descent; -- distinguished from cenogenesis (kenogenesis or coenogenesis), in which the mode of individual development has been modified so that the evolutionary process had become obscured. Sometimes, in zoölogy, the term is applied to the abrupt metamorphosis of insects, crustaceans, etc. See also the note under recapitulation.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. emergence during embryonic development of various characters or structures that appeared during the evolutionary history of the strain or species