atavic

[uh-tav-ik]

adjective

1. atavistic.

Word History and Origins

Origin of atavic¹

1865–70; atav(ism) + -ic ( def. ), modeled on French atavique

Example Sentences

He is bound to those who follow him, and to the atavic influences which he possesses; he serves for their temporary resting-place, and he transmits them to his descendants.

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In a word, the individual between 20 and 25 feels too much the influence of atavic characters, and too readily transmits to his posterity the brands of degeneracy.

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The grandson of Erasmus Darwin had little appreciation of the views of him of whom, through atavic heredity, he was the intellectual and scientific child.

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Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is becoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some atavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological manifestations of individual violence against society and of social violence against individuals.

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The man was struggling with the atavic impulse to thrash the maddening, arrogant woman creature into a humbler frame of mind.

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