adjective [usu ADJ n] Atavistic feelings or behavior seem to be very primitive, like the feelings or behavior of our earliest ancestors. [formal] an atavistic fear of snakes.
What is an example of atavistic?
A physical genealogical trait handed down from many generations is also atavistic. For example, the pointed canine teeth in humans, originally used to tear meat apart when hunting, is an atavistic trait in mankind.
What is a synonym for atavistic?
In this page you can discover 9 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for atavistic, like: throwback, retrorse, reversional, reversionary, animalistic, unthinking, ahistorical, revertible and ineradicable.
How do you use atavistic in a sentence?
Atavistic in a Sentence
Not surprisingly, Jake was an atavistic alcoholic like his father.The bird’s unusually large beak was an atavistic mutation that had previously only been seen in primitive bird species.
What is social atavism?
In social sciences, atavism is the tendency of reversion. For example, people in the modern era reverting to the ways of thinking and acting of a former time. The word atavism is derived from the Latin atavus—a great-great-great-grandfather or, more generally, an ancestor.
What does atavistic mean in psychology?
n. 1. the presence of a genetic trait inherited from a remote ancestor that did not appear in more recent ancestors, that is, a reversion to an earlier type.
What are atavistic stigmata?
Cesare Lombroso was a nineteenth century Italian criminologist who believed that certain facial features (which he termed “”atavistic stigmata””) could be used to identify individuals likely to commit crimes.
What is literary atavism?
The term atavism is usually used to express the recurrence or reappearance of certain ‘primitive’ traits, physical or psychical, which presumably match those of an ancestral form.
Is atavism real?
An atavism is a real or supposed evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations ago. Atavisms occur because genes for previously existing phenotypical features are often preserved in DNA, even though the genes are not expressed in some or most of the organisms possessing them.
What is the opposite of atavism?
Antonyms & Near Antonyms for atavism. advancement, development, evolution, progression.
What is regression synonym?
1 revert, retreat, backslide, lapse, ebb.
What is the root word of atavistic?
“pertaining to a remote ancestor, exhibiting atavism,” 1850, from Latin atavus “ancestor” (see atavism) + -ic. See more.
How is an atavism different from a vestigial structure?
Vestigial structures are homologous of organs that have lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution. Atavism is the recurrence of a trait after an absence of one or more generations due to a chance recombination of genes.
What is atavism quizlet?
Atavism. A term used by Cesare Lombroso to suggest that criminals are physiological throwbacks to earlier stages of human evolution. Somatotyping. The classification of human beings into types according to body build and other physical characteristics.
What does atavistic mean in criminology?
Atavistic form is a historical approach used to explain criminal behaviour, which is based on the biological factors. This explanation was proposed by Lombroso in the 1870s and suggests that some people are born with a criminal personality (e.g. it is innate) that is a throwback to a previous more primitive ancestor.
What are atavistic organs?
Atavism, also known as reversion, is the sudden reappearance of a certain ancestral but not parental structure which has either completely disappeared or greatly reduced. Vestigial organs are those organs which are non-functional in the possessor but were functional in their ancestors and in related animals.
