What is your favorite uncommon word beginning with “A”?
Post your answer in the LEAVE A COMMENT section below. I’m not the boss of you, though. Don’t write anything for all I care! I got an “A” word for anyone who doesn’t, though.
. . .here are my thoughts.
What is your favorite uncommon word beginning with “A”?
Atavism: tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral
I like this underused word because of its ambiguity. Sitting there all alone on the page, it’s completely neutral—no connotation. Only when used in context does it reveal its positive or negative intentions. You may have read stories about babies born with a vestigial tail. This is a form of genetic atavism harkening back to our evolutionary ancestors. We still grow the beginnings of a tail in the womb, but it disappears by eight weeks gestation, ultimately incorporating into our tailbone. A tail on a baby is likely seen as a negative by Mom and Dad, but it’s really a neutral, genetic fluke. I like to use atavism on the much shorter time scale of a human life. This is where context clues are important in determining connotation. An alcoholic with his 20-year sobriety chip can make an atavistic return to the bottle. Definitely negative! A camping trip to the middle of a remote National Park can mandate an atavism to times when we weren’t constantly connected. More context clues are needed to determine if that’s a positive or negative, though.
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