atavism : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: atavism	by the DICT Development Group
2 results for atavism
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
atavism n a reappearance of an earlier characteristic [syn: atavism, reversion, throwback]
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Atavism \At"a*vism\, n. [L. atavus an ancestor, fr. avus a grandfather.] (a) The recurrence, or a tendency to a recurrence, of the original type of a species in the progeny of its varieties; resemblance to remote rather than to near ancestors; reversion to the original form. (b) (Biol.) The recurrence of any peculiarity or disease of an ancestor in a subsequent generation, after an intermission for a generation or two. Now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an ancestral type of character. --J. Fiske