Sunday Word: Atavistic
atavistic [at-uh-vis-tik]
adjective:
reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type.
Examples:
As I see it, the real pleasure of the taxi whistle is its outmodedness; the core of its charm is atavistic. In a world where virtually everything we do is mediated by technology, taxi-whistling is old-fashioned and physical: With just two fingers and one not even very deep breath, you can produce a delightful, if slightly shocking, noise. (Jon Gluck, The Robots Can’t Take Taxi-Whistling Away From Me, Albert Lea Tribune, March 2023)
How I wish scientists and technologists would give up this race to create convincing human simulacra - let's face it: the atavistic shudder they provoke will never dwindle. These automatons of artificial skin will never not be uncanny, even if (especially if) they have your mum's face. (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, Digital humans give me the creeps - but there might be something in it, The Guardian, April 2014)
This is because puzzles train us to be more rigorous thinkers, less swayed by atavistic emotions. (A J Jacobs, Doing Puzzles Can Help Solve Your Other Problems, Too, TIME, May 2022)
For over 200 years, economists have largely accepted such arguments, although some politicians have displayed an atavistic fondness for protection. (Soumaya Keynes, The new order of trade, The Economist, October 2021)
And it was so easy to accept the atavistic memory and menace of myth - of alien life burrowing upward from inner Earth or swooping down from outer stars, of life that feeds upon us, fastens upon us to eat and drink with myriad, monstrous mouths. (Robert Bloch, The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch)
In time of peace in the modern world, if one is thoughtful and careful, it is rather more difficult to be killed or maimed in the outland places of the globe than it is in the streets of our great cities, but the atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure. (John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez )
Origin:
"pertaining to atavism," 1847; from stem of atavism (1833, in biology, "reversion by influence of heredity to ancestral characteristics, resemblance of a given organism to some remote ancestor, return to an early or original type," from French atavisme, attested by 1820s, said to have been coined by French botanist Antoine-Nicolas Duchesne, from Latin atavus "ancestor, forefather," from at- perhaps here meaning "beyond" + avus "grandfather" ) + istic (adjectival word-forming element, from French -istique or directly from Latin -isticus, from Greek -istikos, a compound of the adjectival suffix -ikos + the noun suffix -istes). (Online Etymology Dictionary)