atavism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Millet plays with the title and with the idea of atavism, in which an ancient trait asserts itself by skipping forward a few generations to suddenly appear in the gene pool.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2025
His atavism came with the weekend’s most polish.
From Slate ● May 30, 2023
Enright understands adulthood as a kind of aberration that befalls families: siblings must grow up, but their maturity is oddly irrelevant to the atavism of the family unit.
From The New Yorker ● May 18, 2015
Lasdun presents this as a kind of cultural atavism, a return to a pre-modern situation where social arrangements were dependent upon trust and hearsay, and where a stain on one's honour could be catastrophic.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 16, 2013
As if it came from an atavism deeper than fear, I used to add “brother” silently to boys’ names.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Vocabulary lists containing atavism
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Evolutionary Biology - High School
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Challenge, List 7
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