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Reversion   /rɪvˈərʒən/   Listen
Reversion

noun
1.
(law) an interest in an estate that reverts to the grantor (or his heirs) at the end of some period (e.g., the death of the grantee).
2.
(genetics) a return to a normal phenotype (usually resulting from a second mutation).
3.
A reappearance of an earlier characteristic.  Synonyms: atavism, throwback.
4.
Turning in the opposite direction.  Synonyms: reversal, reverse, turnabout, turnaround.
5.
Returning to a former state.  Synonyms: regress, regression, retrogression, retroversion.
6.
A failure to maintain a higher state.  Synonyms: backsliding, lapse, lapsing, relapse, relapsing, reverting.



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"Reversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... other matters than repining at 'joys expired like truthless dreams.' He built. He planted. He diverted himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his career he always was ready for a hawking match or a bargain for falcons. He once offered the reversion in fee of an Irish leasehold for a goshawk. An incident of his Munster estate, which doubtless he valued highly, was his title to half the produce of an eyrie of hawks in the wood of Mogelly. Amidst the anxieties of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... now obsolete. It derives from the Mid. Eng. cirurgien or sirurgien, through the Fr. from the Gr. [Greek: cheirourgos], one who operates with the hand (from [Greek: cheir], hand, [Greek: ergon], work); from the early form is derived the modern word "surgeon." "Chirurgeon" is a 16th century reversion to the Greek origin. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... how unworthy and incapable he is of succeeding him." The influence of Louvois and the king's ill humor against the Colberts peep out in the injustice of Madame de Maintenon. Seignelay had received from Louis XIV. the reversion of the navy; his father had prepared him for it with anxious strictness, and he had exercised the functions since 1676. Well informed, clever, magnificent, Seignelay drove business and pleasure as a pair. In 1685 he gave the king a splendid entertainment in his castle of Sceaux; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... waited for her to regain control of herself, rather dreading the apology she would feel called upon to make for her abrupt reversion to the first principles of her sex. The sobs ceased entirely. I experienced the sharp joy of relaxation. Her dainty lace handkerchief found employment. First she would dab it cautiously in one eye, then the other, after which she ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... acquaintance with the good bishop, whom I had taxed with being my father, he united us both to our respective partners. My father made over to me the sum which he had mentioned. Mr Masterton gave Susannah ten thousand pounds, and her own fortune amounted to as much more, with the reversion of Mr Cophagus's property at the decease of his widow. Timothy came up to the wedding, and I formally put him in the possession of my shop and stock in trade, and he has now a flourishing business. Although he has not yet found his mother, he has found a very pretty ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, vice versa, controversy, tergiversation, obverse, transverse, reversion, vortex. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... sixteen to twenty-five acres of land to each. This land, held in direct tenure from Jehovah, their sovereign, was in theory inalienable. The accumulation of debt upon it was prevented by the prohibition of interest, the release of debts every seventh year, and the reversion of the land to the proprietor, or his heirs, at each return of the year of jubilee. The owners of these small farms cultivated them with much care, and rendered them highly productive. They were favoured with a soil extremely fertile, and one which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... his liking. Thus it secures and is safe in a double audience. Yet we must return to the thought that such a work is strictly less significant in the evolution of the modern Novel, because of its form, its reversion to type, than the model established by a man like Richardson, who is so ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... enough from Bianca's discourse to persuade him that heaven declared itself against Manfred. The proposed marriages too removed his claim to a distance; and the principality of Otranto was a stronger temptation than the contingent reversion of it with Matilda. Still he would not absolutely recede from his engagements; but purposing to gain time, he demanded of Manfred if it was true in fact that Hippolita consented to the divorce. The Prince, transported to find no other obstacle, and depending on his influence ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... civilization in other than religious spheres. In their social organization they advocated communal marriage, wives being held in common. This type of social organization is quite general in primitive tribes. With the Gnostics we see a reversion to a more primitive form of religious ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... Avarice found its hoard secure, With him contempt forbore to mock the poor; Youth present cheer and promised recompense Detained, till all too late to part from thence: 850 To Hate he offered, with the coming change, The deep reversion of delayed revenge; To Love, long baffled by the unequal match, The well-won charms success was sure to snatch.[ko] All now was ripe, he waits but to proclaim That slavery nothing which was still a name. The moment came, the hour when Otho thought Secure at last ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... discovery. In spite of its feebleness, verbosity, obscurity, and idiotic way of expressing itself, the Deed managed to convey to David and Mrs. Dodd a life interest in nine thousand five hundred pounds, with reversion to Julia and the children of the projected marriage. Sampson and Edward put their heads over this, and it puzzled them, "Why, man," said Sampson, "if the puppy had signed this last night, he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Canto (stanzas lxxxix.-xcii.), he passes a severe sentence. Napoleon's greatness is swallowed up in weakness. He is a "kind of bastard Caesar," self-vanquished, the creature and victim of vanity. Finally, in The Age of Bronze, sections iii.-vi., there is a reversion to the same theme, the tragic irony of the rise and fall of the "king of kings, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... called up, and he deposed to different charges against the defendants—such as taking beforehand, or in reversion, several small farms over the heads of poor but solvent tenants, turning them adrift on the world, and converting their small agricultural farms into one or more large farms for grazing; thereby adding to the number of the destitute, and contracting ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... considerations which in the War of American Independence induced so fine an officer as Howe to be strongly in favour of a reversion to the old system. The vital theatre was then again across the Atlantic, and there was no serious preparation for invasion. It should also be borne in mind in judging Howe against Hawke, that in the Seven Years' War we had such ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... his laurels for posterity (Who does not often claim the bright reversion) Has generally no great crop to spare it, he Being only injured by his own assertion. And although here and there some glorious rarity Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion, The major part of such appellants go To—God knows where—for no ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... feudal masonry. Not an inch of ground in England was owned save under his authority, as enjoying the supremum dominium. All the land had been granted by his predecessors as fiefs, with the right of reversion to the crown by forfeiture in case of the violation of feudal obligations. Here was no allodial property, no censitive hereditary domain, as in the rest of, otherwise, feudal Europe. All English lawyers were ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... had hitherto been held by the Dauphin; while a short time subsequently, when he manifested fresh symptoms of discontent, the Duc de Bouillon was instructed to inquire by what means he could be conciliated; upon which he demanded a pension of fifty thousand livres, the reversion of the government of Dauphiny for his son, who had not at that time attained his fifth year, and the sum of two hundred thousand crowns with which to pay a debt to the Duke of Savoy, contracted on the duchy of Moncalieri belonging to his wife. These exorbitant claims were at once ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... or fashion in literature is apt to express itself either in a fresh and independent criticism of life, or in a reversion to older types. But, as original creative genius is not always forthcoming, a literary revolution commonly begins with imitation. It seeks inspiration in the past, and substitutes a new set of models as different as possible from those ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... occasion to speak of the reversion of an estate, which she said she wished to go to augment the property of the title; and now she should have no hesitation in bequeathing it to him, provided she could see him, on his side, make such a connection as would be for the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sufficient for its delineation, and it is a moral character. We must, of course, get rid of the notion that the relative magnitude of the virtues and vices according to the priest or society is authentic. A reversion to the natural or divine scale has been almost the sole duty preached to us by every prophet. If we could incorporate Conrad with ourselves we should find that the greater part of what is worst in us ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... I find it the most constant in the oldest ware. Rectangular figures are regarded as older than circular figures, and they possibly preceded the latter in evolution, but in many instances both are forms of reversion, highly conventionalized representations of more elaborate figures. Circles and crosses are sometimes combined, the former modified into a wavy line surrounding the latter, as in plate CLIX, c, d, where there is a suggestion (d) of ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... should be no Property Tax. A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... have accepted Father Mestienne's reversion. One gets to be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... ordinary proceedings at NISI PRIUS, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Christian of Zweibruck, had of course his own gloomy thoughts on this parcelling of his Bavarian reversion: but what power has he? None, he thinks, but to take the inevitable patiently. Nor generally in the Princes of the Reich, though one would have thought them personally concerned, were it only for danger ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... thinks a little. 'Combined,' says he directly, 'with the interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion to type. I remember ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... those who find marriages in the sight of heaven uncivilised and socially reactionary, a reversion, in fact, to Nature, which bored her. Gerda and Kay rightly believed such marriages to have some advantages over those more visible to the human eye (as being more readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages at all, which ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... Excise, to keep the place for him. There was, as may easily be supposed, no want of powerful and noble competitors for such a prize. Leeds had, more than twenty years before, obtained from Charles the Second a patent granting the reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin, it was said, pleaded a promise made by William. But Montague maintained, and was, it seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles and the promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the right of appointing the Auditor belonged, not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... language the coarsest, as 'waiting for dead men's shoes,' and bandying to and fro the chances that this man or that man, according to the whim of the morning, should 'have her,' or should not 'have her'—that is, have the reversion of the queen's person as a derelict of the king. All this, though most injurious to her prospects, was made known by Anne Boleyn herself to the female companions who were appointed to watch her revelations in prison. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the voice of fame above the want of any but the most honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation, and abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of the meanest dependant on office—who, having secured the admiration of the public (with the probable reversion of immortality), shewed no respect for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for that nature which he trampled under foot—who, amiable, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... it, hardly like a human episode—the silence so far as words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and apron; having followed the summons from her work. There was a chair in the shadows, and she pressed him down in ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... which were driven in a horizontal row into the board walls of grandfather's back entry ever approximated the ideal. But such a reversion to primitive principles would now be considered out of the question, even in my farm house—by the farmer's wife, at least. The problem of a satisfactory hat-tree, which baffled the genius of Chippendale, is still unsolved in Grand Rapids, and it probably will remain unsolved to the end of time, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... hack-work for others, as, for example, parts of the Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh's 'History of the World'. We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that Jonson accompanied Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In 1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities, though when and under what circumstances ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... landscapes from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer, doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I had studied people, and had already seen such ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... to these Acts, and prorogued Parliament from November, 1639, to June, 1640. The result of the king's evident disinclination to implement the Treaty of Berwick, was an interesting attempt to undo the work of the preceding century by a reversion to the old policy of a French alliance. It was, of course, impossible thus to turn back, and Richelieu met the Scottish offers with a decisive rebuff, while the fact of these treasonable negotiations became known to Charles, and embittered the already bitter controversy. A new attempt ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... majority of the cases in men follow the law of the more irregular periodicities of the nisus generativus in that sex. Many of the cases in both sexes follow the seasonal periodicity which perhaps in man is merely a reversion to the seasonal generative activities of the majority of the lower animals." He found that among 338 cases of insanity, chiefly mania and melancholia, 46 per cent, of females and 40 per cent, of males showed periodicity,—diurnal, monthly, seasonal, or annual, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... wife, of the same age and nearly the same height as himself, was of sanguine colouring and a Cornish family, which had held land in such a manner that it had nearly melted in their grasp. All that had come to Eileen was a reversion, on the mortgageable value of which she and Ralph had been living for some time. Ralph Wotchett also had expectations. By profession he was an architect, but perhaps because of his expectations, he had always had bad luck. The involutions of the reasons why his clients died, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... valley and prepared for the second winter there, returning to the place for several reasons, chief among them being the right of prescription, to which the other tribes yielded tacit consent. The Indian recks little of the future, but in his reversion to primitive type Henry had taken with him much of the acquired and modern knowledge of education. He looked ahead, and, under his constant suggestion, advice and pressure they stored so much food for the winter that there was no chance ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Cleopatra, he said, 'And which cocoa palm did she fall out of?' Phryne was of the beautified baboon cast of features, and as for Helen of Troy, the best authorities now lean to the belief that the face that launched a thousand ships and fired the topless towers of Ilium was a reversion to the arboreal. I tell you, man that is born of woman cannot resist it. Give little ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... well that there should be a reversion to the earlier types of thinking and feeling, to earlier ways of looking at human nature, and I will not altogether refuse the pleasure offered me by the poetic romancer or the historical romancer because I find my pleasure chiefly in Tolstoy and Valdes and Thomas Hardy and Tourguenief, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... spoken of Britain and America as the two countries upon whose choice this supreme issue hangs. But the act of choice is not the same for the two. The British imperial policy (apart from that of the self-governing dominions) has been conducted on a basis of free trade or economic internationalism. A reversion to close imperialism would be for her a retrogression. The United States, on the other hand, has practised a distinctively national economy, and the adoption of a free internationalism would be a great act of faith, or—as some would put ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the accession of George the first was made earl of Halifax, knight of the garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May, 1715, he died of an inflammation ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... why that solemn phiz:— Art thou, too, balancing 'twixt right and wrong? Hast thou a thought so mean as to give up Thy present good, for promise in reversion? 'Tis true hereafter has some feeble terrors, But ere our grizzly heads are wrapt in clay We may compound, and make ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren

... from judicious, and the mischief from injudicious, crossing; and this, in its turn, is seen as part of the same story, as the good we get from change of air and scene when we are overworked. I will not amplify; but reversion to long-lost, or feral, characteristics, the phenomena of old age, the fact of the reproductive system being generally the last to arrive at maturity—few further developments occurring in any organism after this has been attained—the sterility of many animals in confinement, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... debt and disenchantment came news of a slight inflicted by the Latin sister of the North. France had seized Tunis, a land on which Italian patriots looked as theirs by reversion, whereas the exigencies of statecraft assigned it to the French. It seems that during the Congress of Berlin (June-July 1878) Bismarck and Lord Salisbury unofficially dropped suggestions that their Governments would raise no objections to the occupation of Tunis by ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... could dispose of it so far as to put another person in possession of it during a certain number of years; reserving to himself and his relations the right of redeeming it, should they ever possess the means; and having at all events the sure prospect of a reversion at the period of the jubilee. In the eye of the lawgiver this transaction was not regarded as a sale of the land, but merely of the crops for a stated number of seasons. It might indeed have been considered simply as a lease, had not the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... of the house of correction in Cold Bath Fields, and the treatment of the prisoners confined therein. In compliance with the petition of the citizens of London, a bill passed the House of Commons to prevent the granting of places in reversion; but it was opposed and thrown out by the Lords. Petitions for the restoration of peace were likewise presented from numerous towns in the manufacturing districts of the north, which were laid upon the tables of the Houses; but no further ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... grandchildren who are like the grandparents, but quite unlike the parents. Animals often resume a form which have not existed for many generations. One of the most remarkable instances of this kind of reversion, or "atavism," is the fact that in some horses there sometimes appear singular dark stripes similar to those of the zebra, quagga, and other wild ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... changed the sentiments of the Free State. Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. Shepstone, on the informal ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... than when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat, however short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor handmaid that has the reversion of the Tea Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank Thetis ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... quarter-past ten when a reversion was made to the weather. Within here all was supremely comfortable. A black stuff mat, with a red fringed border, lay before the blazing fire, convenient to the feet; the heavy red curtains shut ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election—the Liberals in office—himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons—with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire—this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are only rich in Possibility. We live up to our Expectations, not to our Possessions, and make a Figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are. We out-run our present Income, as not doubting to disburse our selves out of the Profits of some future Place, Project, or Reversion, that we have in view. It is through this Temper of Mind, which is so common among us, that we see Tradesmen break, who have met with no Misfortunes in their Business; and Men of Estates reduced to Poverty, who have never suffered from ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... a statue of the Virgin was thrown down and mutilated by unknown hands, a reversion of feeling arose immediately, and even Marguerite was not able to save poor Berquin, and he was burned at the stake. Upon learning of his imminent peril, she wrote ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... the nomadic temperament—these are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of settlement westward across the American continent, with a reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... subject of reversion, I may here refer to a statement often made by naturalists—namely, that our domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually but certainly revert in character to their aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been argued ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... death of our author's grandfather, he enjoyed the place of paymaster to the band of gentlemen-pensioners, in conjunction with his younger brother, Arthur More; of this place his mother procured the reversion from his late Majesty during his father's lifetime. Being a man of a gay disposition, he insinuated himself into the favour of his grace the duke of Wharton, and being, like him, destitute of prudence, he ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing his yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... survives in the church building, where the old Spanish adobe has been repaired and filled in with the typical tabular aboriginal masonry, consisting of small stones carefully laid, with very little intervening mortar showing on the face. Such reversion to aboriginal methods probably took place on every opportunity, though it is remarkable that the Indians should have been allowed to employ their own methods in this instance. Although this church building ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... Marechal de Boufflers. His eldest son was fourteen years of age, handsome, well made, of much promise, and who succeeded marvellously at the Court, when his father presented him there to the King to thank his Majesty for the reversion of the government of Flow and of Lille. He returned afterwards to the College of the Jesuits, where he was being educated. I know not what youthful folly he was guilty of with the two sons of D'Argenson; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... as arrests of development (microcephalism) and reversion to lower forms are next discussed. Darwin himself felt ("Descent of Man", page 54.) that these subjects are so nearly related to the cases mentioned in the first chapter, that many of them might as well have been dealt with there. It seems ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... by the goal. In fatigue, in illness, in certain of the mental diseases, the failure of the organizing energy brings about failure "to concentrate" and the tyranny of casual associations annoys and angers. The stock complaint of the neurasthenic that everything distracts his attention is a reversion back to the unorganized conditions of childhood, with this essential difference: that the neurasthenic rebels against his difficulty in thinking, whereas the child has no rebellion against that which is his normal state. Minds ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... made a fresh series of mots, characterized with great felicity the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento, predicted the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom (disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule and complete reversion, throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of the Holy Father), and, finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the Princess X——. This narrative provoked some rectifications on the part of the prince, who, as he said, pretended to know ...
— The American • Henry James

... the debt, in the first instance, in funding it, the most artificial and mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all, and applied them to different objects in reversion and remainder, until the whole system was involved in impenetrable fog; and while he was giving himself the airs of providing for the payment of the debt, he left himself free to add to it continually, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... in the north. That was the Argonne, where the Crown Prince was busily getting rid of a few thousands of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure himself the reversion of his father's throne. No man likes losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of this war comes to be written, we may find that the people we mistook for principals and prime agents were only average ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... distinct, nothing specific, nothing which implies a mind acquainted with the nature, and familiarized with the use of the Christian's privileges, habitually solacing itself with the hopes held out by the Gospel, and animated by the sense of its high relations, and its glorious reversion. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... intellectual status of a people, the more essential become space, leisure and soul-expression for bringing children into the world. When evolving persons have reached individuality, and the elements of greatness are formative within them, they pay the price for reversion to worldliness in the extinction of name. The race that produced Emerson and Thoreau and Whitman, that founded our culture and gave us a name in English, is following the red Indian westward off ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... am aware," replied the psychic physician. "That is why His Majesty became alarmed lest your mental equilibrium be disturbed. It seems to indicate an atavistic reversion to a condition of romantic altruism, but as your pedigree is normal, I deem it merely a ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... at least, if not by any anterior right, the common property of the Union. If that were at an end, the States which made the cession, on a principle of federal compromise, would be apt when the motive of the grant had ceased, to reclaim the lands as a reversion. The other States would no doubt insist on a proportion, by right of representation. Their argument would be, that a grant, once made, could not be revoked; and that the justice of participating in territory acquired or secured ...
— The Federalist Papers

... Perceived that Angad had secured, through the love of the Vanars, the reversion of Sugriva's kingdom; or, as another commentator explains it, perceived that Angad had obtained a new kingdom in the enchanted cave which the Vanars, through love of him, would ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... hermaphroditism from the am[oe]ba to the amphioxus, from the ancestor of the parent cell to the ancestor of the vertebrates. We could carry it further, but it is unnecessary. Effemination and viraginity, are due directly to the influence of that strange law laid down by Darwin—the law of reversion to ancestral types. It is an effort of nature to return man to the old hermaphroditic form from which he was evolved. It is an effort on the part of nature to incorporate the individualities of the male and female, both physical and psychical, in one body. The phenomenon ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... priest dropped his victim, and turned upon her would-be rescuer. With foam-flecked lips and bared fangs the mad sun-worshiper battled with the tenfold power of the maniac. In the blood lust of his fury the creature had undergone a sudden reversion to type, which left him a wild beast, forgetful of the dagger that projected from his belt—thinking only of nature's weapons with which his ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... has since expanded into a palace. I stoutly battled the foe, for I "took no note of time" during the next day and night; and when at last I walked forth into the air, I found that I had relieved myself of the burden of three-fourths of my reversion. A weak mind on such an occasion would have cursed the cards, and talked of taking care of the fragment of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on revenge. I had my revenge, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various

... was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-brushes, hair-ribbons, shoe polish, pins, buttons, elastic, and other means to grace. Her talks on soap and water became almost personal in tone, and her insistence ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... was soon presented to the friends of Edward's administration, under the direction of his counsellors and servants, was a contemplation which the reflecting mind was compelled to regard with most alarming apprehensions. The rapid approaches which were made towards a total reversion of the proceedings of the young king's reign, denoted the advances which were thereby represented to an entire revolution in the management of public affairs both in church ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... prefer'd to guard the sacred Store: There Lordly rowling in whole Mines of Oar; To Diceing Lords, a Cully-Favourite, He prostitutes whole Cargoes in a Night. Here to the Top of his Ambition come, Fills all his Sayls for hopeful Absolom. For his Religion's as the Season calls, Gods in Possession, in Reversion Baals. He bears himself a Dove to Mortal Race, And though not Man, he can look Heav'n i'th' Face. Never was Compound of more different Stuff, A Heart in Lambskin, and ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... Lady Merrifield, as Gillian walked beside her, 'you must be satisfied with giving Miss Hacket the reversion of our tree, and you and Mysie can go and help her. It will not do to make these kind of works a nuisance ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hooted and finally oppressed, these protesters will form a clan or sect and adopt a distinctive garb and speech. If persecuted, they will hold together, as cattle on the prairies huddle against the storm. But if left alone the Law of Reversion to Type catches the second generation, and the young men and maidens secrete millinery, just as birds do a brilliant plumage, and the strange sect merges into and is lost in the mass. The Jews did not say, Go to, we will be peculiar, but, as Mr. Zangwill has stated, they have remained a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... found himself entitled to, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, after paying his rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings. And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit London, with a light heart, and sprang ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... things as they really are, and this is also the nature of whatever promotes knowledge and the means thereof. Nor is it even true that the mirror manifests the face. The mirror is only the cause of a certain irregularity, viz. the reversion of the ocular rays of light, and to this irregularity there is due the appearance of the face within the mirror; but the manifesting agent is the light only. And it is evident that the ahamkara is not capable of producing an irregularity (analogous to that ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... confronted by similar condition on a small scale in Nicaragua. Our marine and naval forces protected our citizens and their property and prevented a heavy sacrifice of life and the destruction of that country by a reversion to a state of revolution. Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War, was sent there to cooperate with our diplomatic and military officers in effecting a settlement between the contending parties. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... wants proof of this reversion into the old religions of India, he has only to notice that the name, given to the new god made by personification of the attribute of power, Vagrapani, or Vadjradhara, or the bearer of the thunder-bolt, had ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... with admiration and gratitude. He had been a friend for a day or two to the beasts of the forest and one of them had come to his rescue. The feeling of reversion to a primitive golden age was still strong within him, and doubtless the bear, too, had really felt the sense of kinship. He looked in the direction in which the shambling animal had gone, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps he had disappeared ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... overcome with delight. Nothing was said to Tyrrel about Ethel having bought the reversion of Rawdon Manor, for things have been harder to get into proper shape than I thought they would be, and it may be another month before all is finally settled; but the Squire has the secret satisfaction, and he was much affected by the certainty ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... drunken rogue as lives, and Tom Shoemaker; and I hope you will not deny that he's an honest man, for he was constable o' the town; and a number of other honest rascals which, though they are grown bankrouts, and live at the reversion of other men's tables, yet, thanks be to God, they have a penny amongst them at all times ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... service, and as much as he dared of the once rigorous discipline. Hadrian first found himself in circumstances, or was the first who had courage enough to decline a momentary interest in favor of a greater in reversion; and a personal object which was transient, in favor of a state ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Brigham, near Kelso, and on the 18th of July, 1290, the treaty was concluded. It contained, besides the provisions of the marriage, clauses for the personal freedom of Margaret should she survive her husband; for the reversion of the crown failing her issue; for protection of the rights, laws, and liberties of Scotland; the freedom of the church; the privileges of crown vassals; the independence of the courts; the preservation of all charters and natural ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... surroundings. The profound character looks beyond all these and moves steadily on, sailing past all the storms and clouds into the clear sunshine which is always on the other side, and waiting for the afterwards which always brings the reversion of sorrow and ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... optimist might call the low level of sensuous thought, and so long as we imagine that we exist and suffer, an aristocratic regimen can only be justified by radiating benefit and by proving that were less given to those above less would be attained by those beneath them. Such reversion of benefit might take a material form, as when, by commercial guidance and military protection, a greater net product is secured to labour, even after all needful taxes have been levied upon it to support greatness. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— 905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of Satan!" interrupted the Corporal fiercely, as if his whole tide of thought, so lately favourable to the Soothsayer, had undergone a deadly reversion. "Please your honour, it's getting late, we had better ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... particular antagonist. Consequently, you must abandon the principle of concentration of superior numbers against your enemy; and, what is more, must be prepared to maintain that such concentration on his part against yourself would be ineffectual. This will compel a reversion to tactical methods which made a fleet action a series of duels between pairs of combatants, and—a thing to be pondered on seriously—never enabled anyone to win a decisive victory on the sea. The position will not be made more logical ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,—of this, and of that which was to ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. "Give me ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... eight hundred pounds per annum, on the strength of which he spends between two thousand pounds and three thousand pounds: of course, in order 207to do this, he has to raise money on his expectancies. About two months ago he wanted to sell the contingent reversion of a large estate in Yorkshire, from which the greater part of his future income is to be derived; and a client of ours thought of buying it—ergo, we were set to work upon the matter: whilst we were investigating his right, title, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... his own stainless and immutable progenitor appear as stained and changeful).[1345] When Jiva succeeds in dispelling by means of Knowledge, the Darkness that invests him in consequence of Ignorance, then Immutable Brahma becomes displayed (in all His glory). The Sages say that reversion to Immutable Brahma is incapable of being achieved by Acts. Thyself, others in the world, and the deities too, should reverence them that have achieved Emancipation. All the great Rishis never desist from culture ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... principles against which they had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended to destroy. We congratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm, on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, the great changes that have been effected, and the reversion of institutions: a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... when they waived their claims, and that every Testament was submitted to the General Assembly of the Roman Gentes, in order that those aggrieved by its dispositions might put their veto upon it if they pleased, or by allowing it to pass might be presumed to have renounced their reversion. It is possible that on the eve of the publication of the Twelve Tables this vetoing power may have been greatly curtailed or only occasionally and capriciously exercised. It is much easier, however, to indicate the meaning and origin of the jurisdiction confided ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Dr. Hooker questions the fact of reversion. According to him, species in general do not readily vary, but when they once begin to do so the new varieties, as every horticulturist knows, show a great inclination to go on departing more and more from the old stock. As ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... issued by the Press Bureau that carrier pigeons are to be used officially for certain purposes is an extremely interesting reversion to what we had regarded as almost premature ways ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various

... that bleeding bosom gored, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die? Why bade ye else, ye Pow'rs! her soul aspire Above the vulgar flight of low desire? Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... not always remain the only permissible emblem of Deity. The image of a man—an archetypal man—was in after days placed in the temples and adored as the highest representation of the divine. In some ways this might be considered a reversion to the Rmoahal worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was comparatively pure, and the occult fraternity of the "Good Law" of course did their utmost to keep alive in the hearts of the people ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... he purposed handing over the triple tiara to his son, Cardinal Piero de' Riari. Nevertheless, there was some idea in the mind of Sixtus, which he conveyed to his fellow-conspirators, of making an agreement with Giuliano, that if he would condone the exile of his brother, then his should be the reversion of the Popedom after ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... good reason, but they have broken the rules of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the North and North-west. That was why the sight of the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... high privilege to stand above all things, to call them to his feet and to compel their service. It is the reversion of the order for him to take the subordinate place and serve the inferior creation. Things subdued, such as wealth secured, is to minister to his highest good and to promote his noblest manhood. The order is reversed when this wealth commands his service ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... William's education, but should adopt him as "a Child of State." It was a short-sighted device for, as the princess shrewdly saw, this exceptional position assigned to her grandson must ensure, when he grew to man's estate, the reversion of his ancestral dignities. She willingly assented; and in April, 1666, the Estates of Holland appointed a Commission, of which John de Witt was himself the head, which was entrusted with the religious and political instruction of the prince. A few months later De Witt was to discover that ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... Reversion to cannibalism under a total lack of other food ought not to be noted. We have some historical cases, however, in which during famine people became so familiarized with cannibalism that their horror of it was overcome. Abdallatif[1090] mentions a great ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... called "high explosives," that is, explosives of far greater destructive power than the same weight of gunpowder. Similar improvements were naturally extended to the larger guns, and thus there has been a reversion to the type of ships mounting a fair number of guns, the lighter ones, firing shells of 100 pounds, being intended to wreck the unarmoured portions of the enemy, and demoralise his crew; the heavier ones, 200-pounders, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... sprouting seeds, after the coldest rains are over, say in February. Cherry and plum seeds should be kept moist after taking from the fruit; very little is usually had from dry seeds. The other fruits will stand considerable drying. Very few olives are from the seed, because of reversion to wild types - also because it is so much easier to get just the variety you want by growing ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first, with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literary instincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for future copy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type, which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather the incarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able to recognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... he declared vehemently, appalled by her reversion to that delusion. "Till this hour I have never seen thee; nor is the sahiba of any concern to thee. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... historic epochs, not through two different periods. Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the terrible World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion to brutality which suggest the fall of the Roman Empire. We ourselves do not quite understand what is happening around us. More than two-thirds of Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there prevails ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... readiness to endeavour to obtain it for her; but on consulting the lawyers they decided that this could not be done. Her father—Master Radford—had been outlawed in the reign of King Henry for holding heretical opinions; and unless he should appear and obtain a reversion of that outlawry, the estate would remain forfeited. By petitioning the Queen's Majesty, however, there would be no difficulty in obtaining this reversion. But Master Radford had not appeared; and great doubts were entertained whether he was still ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... while the reversion to the jackal type is more complete, and the yaller dog has pricked and pointed ears. Beware of him then. He is cunning and plucky and can bite like a wolf. There is a strange, wild streak in his nature ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... power would strike at the very foundation of our system of government. It would be a reversion to the system of the ancient republics where the state was everything and the individual nothing except as a part of the state, and where liberty perished. It would be a repudiation of the fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... not live to see the complete regeneration of the savage hordes of the Eastern Hemisphere—that is a work which will require many generations, perhaps ages, so complete has been their reversion to savagery; but I know that the work has been started, and I am proud of the share in it which my generous countrymen have ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... arrived at by Hume and Mrs. Eastham, Capella must be deemed capable of murdering his wife's brother, of bringing about the death of his wife after securing the reversion of her vast property to himself, and of falling in love with Helen—all in the same breath. This species of criminality was only met with in lunatics, and Capella impressed the barrister as an emotional personage, ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... Janet would be safe. The white people of Wellington were not savages; or at least their temporary reversion to savagery would not go as far as to include violence to delicate women and children. Then there flashed into his mind Josh Green's story of his "silly" mother, who for twenty years had walked the earth as a child, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... lady's silken scarf, untiring and enduring as a Damascus blade. A horse that comes but once during twenty generations of Spanish-Arabian stock, and then is rare, and which, through some trick of nature or reversion, blossoms forth in all the beauty of an original type, taking upon himself the color and markings of some shy, wild-eyed dam, the pride of the Bedouin tribe and is known as the "Pearl of the Desert." The type of horse that bore Alexander and Jenghis Khan and the Prophet's War ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... and of political courage. How melancholy to reflect, that there would be still some chance of saving England from the general wreck of empires, but that it may not be saved, because one politician will lose two thousand a year by it, and another three thousand—a third a place in reversion, and a fourth a pension for his aunt! Alas! these are the powerful causes which have always settled the destiny of great kingdoms, and which may level Old England, with all its boasted freedom, and boasted wisdom, to the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... she said to herself, as she recrossed the bridge, "to give only the reversion of that property to his grandchildren, and let me have the life-interest in it. I have no idea of letting my daughter and son-in-law turn me out of doors; they must ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... of the very lowest forms of life eat their young. Is civilized man merely a case, at last, of reversion to a primitive type? ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... head of the government, and was succeeded by the Duke of Grafton; although Mr. Pitt, recently created Earl of Chatham, was virtually the prime minister. Lord Rockingham retired from office with a high character for pure and disinterested patriotism, and without securing place, pension, or reversion, to himself or to ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... polygonal drum-domes, and their collapse owing to their size may well have led to the small drum-domes of later times. Though not strictly Byzantine these Turkish domes are of interest as showing the development of Byzantine forms under Turkish rule, and that reversion to the earlier drumless dome which is so marked a feature of the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... are so great,' says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to reign over us, in a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son be a fool: we think your services so remarkable, that he shall have the reversion of your honours when death vacates your noble shoes. If you are poor, we will give you such a sum of money as shall enable you and the eldest-born of your race for ever to live in fat and splendour. It is our wish that ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... surface decidedly better and the ponies very steady on the march. None seem overtired, and now it is impossible not to take a hopeful view of their prospect of pulling through. (Temp. -14 deg., night.) The only circumstance to be feared is a reversion to bad surfaces, and that ought not to happen on this course. We marched to the usual lunch camp and saw a large cairn ahead. Two miles beyond we came on the Motor Party in Lat. 80 deg. 32'. We learned that ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... was once 'the onelye reliefe of the porest sort of that Company.' On every side the best work was seized and monopolised. Nor did the evil cease there. These patents were invariably granted for life with reversion to a successor, and they were bought and sold freely. Hence the poorer members of the Company daily found it harder to live. There was very little light literature, and what there was had few readers. ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... animals, to whom the danger is merely something out of the ordinary. He then comes under the domination of the instinct to panic. It will thus be seen that all the mental processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human faculty of reason. However, if reason can by any means retain its foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell



Words linked to "Reversion" :   genetic mutation, revert, interest, jurisprudence, recidivism, change of direction, about-face, return, genetic science, mutation, stake, genetics, failure, reorientation, escheat, u-turn, recurrence, law, about turn, chromosomal mutation



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