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atavist

NOUN
  1. an organism that has the characteristics of a more primitive type of that organism

How To Use atavist In A Sentence

  • Of two hundred seeds one became a blue atavist, or rather vicinist, while all others remained true to the white type. Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation
  • As I glean from the Wikipedia article on the subject, atavistic traits are "birth defects" more than reactions to environmental changes. Eureka: What About Bob?
  • But atavistic, or vestigial, geotropism in Genesistrine -- or a million larvae start crawling, and a million little frogs start hopping -- knowing no more what it's all about than we do when we crawl to work in the morning and hop away at night. The Book of the Damned
  • Stripped of any political content, today's conflicts in Northern Ireland are now what many wrongly assumed them to be during the Troubles: base, atavistic, sectarian clashes.
  • It becomes virtually impossible when your enemy is trying to inflame every atavistic passion in order to defeat you.
  • They were to become isolated to the point that they forged a new selfhood born of solitude, inspired by the type of atavistic visual symbolism that Purist painting provided.
  • It is never quite free from the old atavistic type of the trifoliolate leaves, and invariably, when external conditions become less favorable, this atavistic form is apt to gain dominion over the more refined varietal character. Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation
  • Ultimately, it also proves the primitively atavistic nature of human beings: that altruism is an unnatural societal construct and that self-interest is the natural impulse of the human animal. Marshall Fine: Movie Review: Inside Job
  • Members of the audience actually gasped when Hayek referred to Socialism as 'atavistic' - the reversion to an older, more primitive form. Socialism as Primitivism, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
  • For an atavistically bloody entertainment, a bullfight includes much traditional pomp and ceremony.
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