The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
ATAVISM
Definition of ATAVISM
noun
The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; a throwback.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Other senses
ATAVISM carries 4 further meanings.
noun
The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence.
noun
An individual or a part that exhibits atavism.
noun
The return of a trait or recurrence of previous behavior after a period of absence.
noun
In biology, reversion, through the influence of heredity, to ancestral characters; resemblance exhibited by a given organism to some remote ancestor; the return to an early or original type by its modified descendants; restoration of structural characters which have been lost or obscured.
Where it comes from
Borrowed from French atavisme.. By surface analysis, at- (“to”) + Latin av(us) (“grandfather, ancestor”) + -ism. Compare ancestorism.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
ATAVISM in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 32 boards so far. 112 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 24, 13 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 108, 5 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 24, 13 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
ATAVISM starts with A and ends with M. Sorted, its letters read AAIMSTV - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. A appears more than once.
Words that mean much the same
Near-synonyms of ATAVISM. Not interchangeable at the board - the grid decides that - but close in meaning.
Words that start ATAVIS
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 24
Could you have found ATAVISM?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 24 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER