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• n  a reappearance of an earlier characteristic

• The peculiar vogue that the Mafia is now enjoying in films and books may spring from a kind of stylish atavism that Americans recognize in a brute feudal system that allows swift .
• What Nauman practices is a form of psychic primitivism, or atavism if you prefer.
• Elkind further indulges his atavism in his new book, The Power of Play, a lamentation on the gradual replacement of toy trucks and dollhouses with "robo pets and battery-operated .

• reversion
• throwback

Quotes

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• Nicholas Humphrey in Times Online
  Professor Humphrey believes that both nature and nurture are at work: "My view is that their genetic defect exposed an atavism and they have rediscovered or reinvented an ancient way of walking."