Meaning
An electronic image or figure that represents and is controlled by a user in a game, app, or virtual space, now the dominant everyday sense. The word entered English meaning the descent of a Hindu deity to earth in bodily form, and it still covers any incarnation or embodiment of a quality or idea ('the avatar of calm'). The computing sense is a metaphor drawn from the theological one: a god's earthly embodiment reimagined as a person's digital embodiment. Everyday in gaming and tech contexts; the older 'embodiment' sense is literary and the religious sense is specific to Hindu theology. Regional use: General English (borrowed from Sanskrit).
Origin
From Sanskrit avatara, literally 'descent,' from ava-, 'off, down,' plus the verbal root seen in tarati, '(he) crosses over,' together describing a deity's crossing down to earth, as when Vishnu descends in forms such as Rama or Krishna. English adopted it in colonial-era writing about Indian religion, with both Merriam-Webster and Etymonline dating first known use to 1784. A figurative sense, 'a concrete embodiment of something abstract, such as an idea or personification,' followed by 1815. The computing sense, a user's graphical stand-in in a virtual environment, became widespread in the early 1990s; Etymonline traces that usage to Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash, which imagined people represented by avatars in a metaverse.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- avataar
- avatara
- avtar
Usage Examples
- She updated her avatar before the online class so it would stop wearing a graduation cap.
- Your avatar can explore the whole island while you stay on the couch.
- Older critics saw in the young singer the avatar of a restless new style.