Vocabulary Word
Word: revert
Definition: relapse; backslide; turn back to; return to the former owner; N. reversion
Definition: relapse; backslide; turn back to; return to the former owner; N. reversion
Sentences Containing 'revert'
``I hastened to you,''continued Beauchamp,``to tell you, Albert, that in this changing age, the faults of a father can not revert upon his children.
``But,''said Valentine, timidly,``does all the father's shame revert upon the son?
``It was considered, that you dead, the fortune would naturally revert to your brother, unless he were disinherited; and besides, the crime appearing useless, it would be folly to commit it.''
Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil--in which case, however, some effect would have to be attributed to the DEFINITE action of the poor soil--that they would, to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal stock.
Either, first, that all the several imagined aboriginal stocks were coloured and marked like the rock-pigeon, although no other existing species is thus coloured and marked, so that in each separate breed there might be a tendency to revert to the very same colours and markings.
In a breed which has been crossed only once the tendency to revert to any character derived from such a cross will naturally become less and less, as in each succeeding generation there will be less of the foreign blood; but when there has been no cross, and there is a tendency in the breed to revert to a character which was lost during some former generation, this tendency, for all that we can see to the contrary, may be transmitted undiminished for an indefinite number of generations.
For in this case the variability will seldom as yet have been fixed by the continued selection of the individuals varying in the required manner and degree, and by the continued rejection of those tending to revert to a former and less modified condition.
But when a breed has been crossed only once by some other breed, the offspring occasionally show for many generations a tendency to revert in character to the foreign breed--some say, for a dozen or even a score of generations.
Species inheriting nearly the same constitution from a common parent, and exposed to similar influences, naturally tend to present analogous variations, or these same species may occasionally revert to some of the characters of their ancient progenitors.
Thus Max Wichura doubts whether hybrids ever revert to their parent forms, and he experimented on uncultivated species of willows, while Naudin, on the other hand, insists in the strongest terms on the almost universal tendency to reversion in hybrids, and he experimented chiefly on cultivated plants.
'I shall never, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you.
Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a performance with which he was so highly satisfied.
More Vocab Words
::: megalomania - mania for doing grandiose things; mental disorder characterized by delusions of wealth, power, or importance::: repugnance - disgust; strong dislike; loathing; ADJ. repugnant: arousing disgust; repulsive
::: notoriety - disrepute; ill fame
::: dissident - dissenting (with an opinion, a group, or a government); rebellious; N.
::: waver - move or swing back and forth; be uncertain or unsteady in decision or movement; Ex. wavering between accepting and refusing
::: hegemony - dominance especially of one nation over others
::: mire - entangle; stick in swampy ground; stick or sink in mire; N: bog; deep mud; Ex. sucked deeper into the mire
::: contrived - unnatural and forced; artificial; not spontaneous; Ex. The ending was rather contrived.
::: vicissitude - change (esp. from good to bad); change of fortune; CF. the last emperor of China
::: doldrums - blues; listlessness(lack of spirit or energy); slack(inactive) period; period of stagnation; ocean area near the equator where ships cannot move because there is no wind; Ex. in the doldrums
