atavism

From French atavisme < Latin atavus (ancestor).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈætəˌvɪzəm/, [ˈæɾəˌvɪzəm][1]

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• Hyphenation: at‧a‧vism

atavism (countable and uncountable, plural atavisms)

1. 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.

2. The recurrence or reversion to a past behaviour, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence.
   • 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.

3. (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".

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.

• atavist
• atavistic
• atavistical

• throwback

Borrowed from French atavisme.

atavism n (uncountable)

1. atavism