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Atavistic   /ˈætəvɪstɪk/   Listen
adjective
atavistic  adj.  
1.
Displaying characteristics of a previous cultural era or of a previous ancestral form; displaying atavism
Synonyms: atavic, throwback(prenominal)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Atavistic" Quotes from Famous Books



... mastery of himself. Emmanuel was still in process of formation and more chaotic than Christophe had ever been. The originality of his face came from the contradictory elements that were at grips in him; a mighty stoicism, struggling to tame a nature consumed by atavistic desires,—(he was the son of a drunkard and a prostitute);—a frantic imagination which tugged against the bit of a will of steel; an immense egoism, and an immense love for others, and of the two it were impossible to tell which would be the conqueror; an heroic idealism ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... famous mountebank of Notre Dame did not juggle with greater fervour. Here and there a woman crosses his path, lingers a little and goes her way. Not that he is insensible to female charms, for he upbraids himself for over-susceptibility. But it seems that from the atavistic source whence he inherited his beautiful hands, there survived in him an instinct which craved in woman the indefinable quality that he could never meet, the quality which was common to Melisande and Phedre ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... individual. Earlier writers, therefore, felt the need of special theories of play. The best known of these theories are, first, the Schiller-Spencer surplus energy theory; second, the Groos preparation for life theory; third, the G. Stanley Hall atavistic theory; fourth, the Appleton biological theory. Each of the theories has some element of truth in it, for play is complex enough to include them all, but each, save perhaps the last, falls short of an ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... pleased. "But even with your childhood experiences there must be an atavistic streak in you—a throwback to your adventurous Earth forebears who ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... glad of our swift ponies. From our saddles we could study these outbreaks of atavistic ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland


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