Atavistical

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Connected to traits inherited from distant ancestors or evolutionary predecessors
2. Characterizing occurrences or behaviors that reflect primitive features or ancestral qualities
3. Relating to characteristics or behaviors that revert to earlier evolutionary forms or ancestral traits

Etymology: Atavistic comes from "atavus," the Latin word for a great-great-grandfather or any remote ancestor, a term built from "avus" (grandfather) with the prefix "at-" added to push the idea further back. The sense of inherited traits belonging to remote forebears came into English through French "atavisme," a word that appears in the source's chain of borrowings. English then built "atavism" on that base, using the Greek-derived suffix "-ism" as in many scientific and philosophical terms. The adjective "atavistic" was formed by adding the suffix "-istic" to "atavism," the pattern used for words describing what belongs to a doctrine, habit, or condition. The Latin ancestry of the stem is clear enough that the English word is essentially a Latin family name for ancestors, rendered as a description of traits passed down from them. "Atavistical" is simply "atavistic" with the suffix "-al" added, a common English adjective ending meaning "relating to." The two adjectives mean the same thing, and the longer form is the older-sounding variant of the pair.

Synonyms: primitive, ancestral, reversionary, retrogressive, backward-looking

Antonyms: advanced, modern, progressive, evolved, developed