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Word entry · 7 letters

atavism

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7 lettersPronunciation /ˈætəˌvɪzəm/Part of speech nounSorted aaimstvStarts with AEnds with M0 clues
1A2T3A4V5I6S7M

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Definitions

  1. a reappearance of an earlier characteristic

Word origin

Borrowed from French atavisme.. By surface analysis, at- (“to”) + Latin av(us) (“grandfather, ancestor”) + -ism. Compare ancestorism.

Used in a sentence

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity.

Source: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0

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