# atavism
## English
### Etymology

From French atavisme.

### Pronunciation

* (General American) IPA: /ˈætəˌvɪzəm/, [ˈæɾəˌvɪzəm]
* Audio (General American):(file)
* Hyphenation: at‧a‧vism

### Noun

atavism (countable and uncountable, plural atavisms)
* The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback.
** 1904, Jack London, chapter 10, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely primitive that he was of the type that came into the world before the development of the moral nature. He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.
** 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:Hence on false premises was built up that belief in spirits or invisible beings outside ourselves, which by some curious atavism was re-emerging in modern days among the less educated strata of mankind.
* The recurrence or reversion to a past behaviour, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence.
** 1920, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “The Wedded Wife”, in The Lost Girl, London: Martin Secker […], →OCLC, page 316:She had lost the power to care about his faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The word recurred curiously.
** 1938, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Ibid:Upon the death of Theodoric in 526, Ibidus retired from public life to compose his celebrated work (whose pure Ciceronian style is as remarkable a case of classic atavism as is the verse of Claudius Claudianus, who flourished a century before Ibidus); but he was later recalled to scenes of pomp to act as court rhetorician for Theodatus, nephew of Theodoric.
* (sociology) Reversion to past primitive behavior, especially violence.
** 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXVI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity.
** 1986, Michael Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics”, in American Political Science Review, volume 80, number 4:"...he traces the roots of objectless imperialism to three sources, each an atavism. Modern imperialism, according to Schumpeter, resulted from the combined impact of a "war machine", warlike instincts, and export monopolism".

#### Usage notes

* Can be used both positively, to refer to past or ancestral characteristics, or pejoratively, referring specifically to past primitive characteristics.
* A rather formal term; in popular speech the circumlocution skip a generation is often used for traits that occur after a generation of absence.

#### Derived terms

* atavist
* atavistic
* atavistical

#### See also

* throwback

### References

* ↑ “atavism”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

## Romanian
### Etymology

Borrowed from French atavisme.

### Noun

atavism n (uncountable)
* atavism