What is "atavistic"

Usage examples of "atavistic".

In his hands the didgeridoo became a living thing, an imprisoned orchestra, an insistent long-distance call to an atavistic past that went beyond music to penetrate to the heart of whatever it was that made its listeners human.

And now after the guilt and the uncertainty had ebbed away, after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection, his lover had been taken from him.

He was gnawing, grinding his teeth on the hangnail, then the nail itself, the base of the nail, the pale arc of quarter moon, the lunula, and there was something awful and atavistic in the scene, Chin unborn, curled in a membranous sac, a scary little geek-headed humanoid, sucking his scalloped hands.

They wandered aside from the cave-mouth, and Saya found completely primitive and wholly atavistic pride in the courage of Burl, who was actually not afraid of the dark!

Alvarado said during combat to turn the direction of the bullets shot at her son, how he had come in the tumult of the war with a red rag on his head shouting during the lull in fighting from the delirium of fever long live the liberal party, God damn it, long live victorious federalism, shitty Goths, even though really drawn along by the atavistic curiosity of knowing the sea, except that the misery-ridden crowd that had invaded the city with the corpse of his mother was more turbulent and frantic than any that had ravaged the country during the adventures of the federalist war, more voracious than that turmoil, more terrible than that panic, the most tremendous thing my eyes had seen in all the uncounted years of his power, the whole world general sit, look, what a wonder.

Through some atavistic instinct, when the sun rises, the skiapod is led to lie down and to shield his head with his foot.

The flashing lasers and sound overwhelmed the ventromedial cortex of the brain, which inhibits violent and atavistic behavior.

If not Nick, then some man, because George Fenn's atavistic temperament required him to pass land to a man, not a woman, even of his own genetic herit age.

If not Nick, then some man, because George Fenn's atavistic temperament required him to pass land to a man, not a woman, even of his own genetic heritage.

If not Nick, then some man, because George Fenn’s atavistic temperament required him to pass land to a man, not a woman, even of his own genetic heritage.

Well, there was no proof that their day hadn't been spent in gratifying their sex drive, and not an atavistic pleasure in dietary habits.

She'd probably been enjoying this atavistic hunter-explorer life more than she should - considering it also involved lots of discomfort and uncertainty, as well as enough hazards to get the ol' adrenalin flowing freely most of the time.

That may have originated from some atavistic urge, but caves were Threadproof, and some of them were downright spacious.

His silhouette gave Cairns an atavistic pang of unease, like a childish reaction to a familiar person in a frightening mask.

The difficulty of commensuration can exist only in minds obsessed by the atavistic necessity of counting cowries or wives on the fingers.