atavism


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atavism

 [at´ah-vizm]
apparent inheritance of characters from remote ancestors. adj., adj atavis´tic.

at·a·vism

(at'ă-vizm),
The appearance in an individual of characteristics presumed to have been present in some remote ancestor; reversion to an earlier biologic type, a throwback.
[L. atavus, a remote ancestor]

atavism

/at·a·vism/ (at´ah-vizm) apparent inheritance of a characteristic from remote rather than immediate ancestors.atavis´tic

atavism

(ăt′ə-vĭz′əm)
n.
1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence.
2. An individual or a part that exhibits atavism. Also called throwback.
3. The return of a trait or recurrence of previous behavior after a period of absence.
at′a·vist n.
at′a·vis′tic adj.
at′a·vis′ti·cal·ly adv.

atavism

[at′əviz′əm]
Etymology: L, atavus, ancestor
the appearance in an individual of traits or characteristics more like those of a grandparent or earlier ancestor than of the parents. Atavistic data may offer clues to an examining physician of genetic or familial health factors. atavistic, adj.
Any of a number of normally dormant traits—e.g., the presence in humans of multiple nipples, appearance of vestigial hind limbs in whales, or possibly hereditary hypertrichosis in humans

atavism

Any of a number of normally dormant traits–eg, the presence in humans of multiple nipples, appearance of vestigial hind limbs in whales, or possibly hereditary hypertrichosis in humans

at·a·vism

(at'ă-vizm)
The appearance in an individual of characteristics presumed to have been present in some remote ancestor; reversion to an earlier biologic type; a throwback.
[L. atavus, a remote ancestor]

atavism

The reappearance of a genetic characteristic after generations of absence. This may be caused by the coincidence of two recessive genes, by recombination, or by mutation. The organism or individual so produced is often called a ‘throwback’.

atavism

the recurrence of a characteristic possessed by an ancestor after an absence for several generations.

atavism

apparent inheritance of characters from remote ancestors, caused by recessive genes. Called also 'throwback'.
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References in periodicals archive ?
Atavism, the irruption of the past in present-day bodies, is for Seitler compelling because of the way it disallows traditional notions of teleological time, and also because of the way it manifests or, perhaps more to the point, embodies the paradoxes of modernity as an episteme.
Atavistic Tendencies: The Culture of Science in American Modernity
2) `Between Atavism and Altruism: The Child on the Threshold in Victorian Psychology and Edwardian Children's Fiction', in Children in Culture: Approaches to Childhood, ed.
From stunted child to `new woman': the significance of physical growth in late-nineteenth-century medicine and fiction
If the stereotyped tropes of racial atavism are complicit in the narratives of Evans and Davies, they are simultaneously deployed elsewhere in literary constructions of the Welsh as primitive and bestial (examined here in another story by Davies as well as the poems of R.
Postcolonialism Revisited
Forster, and John Wolfenden are discussed, as well as views about degeneracy and atavism, purity and impurity, ideas propagated to young boys, and homosexuality and psychiatry.
Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World. (reprint, 2003)
Yet there is also a tangible sense of atavism, yearning, and perhaps even sorrow about the anniversary, for the way it italicizes the contrast between Britain's former naval greatness and national heroism and her present unprecedented maritime weakness.
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This blurring of work and leisure in Civil War hospitals suggests a temporary atavism to premodern life in the context of a war often paraded as modern.
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I realise that Iran has an unhealthy nostalgic imperial atavism.
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We see tribalism and atavism and other phenomena because the authorities don't have sound ties with their own peoples.
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The strain of abjection in Massingberd's temperament clearly runs deep, and the persona he's evolved for himself, a blend of fogeyish atavism and teenage giddiness, is so peculiar that one can't help warming to it.
Two 'berds in the hand
However, all is not immediately urban here, for in a work of impressive conceptual and methodological scope, Den Tandt also considers the fearful discourse of atavism and degeneracy and the concomitant dread of proletarianization and racial heterogeneity, the significance of the figure of the artist in such works as Dreiser's The 'Genius' and Cather's The Song of the Lark, and what he finds to be the essentially suburban pastoral of London's The Valley of the Moon.
The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism
This is not Kurtz's dark epiphany after his regression to atavism or Ahab's final mad recognition of the implacable immensity of what he has sought to kill.
Dream journeys

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