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avatar

Pronunciation: /ˌæv.əˈtɑː(ɹ)/

The English word “avatar” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.
  2. One which serves to act in place of or on behalf of the entity; a simulacrum.
  3. The embodiment of an idea or concept; an instantiation, especially an incarnation or personification.
  4. One which serves as the means through which the entity interacts with its environment; a player character or host.
  5. A graphical representation of a user or persona; used in reference to any digital environment, but especially nonmetaversal ones.
  6. A character model, used virtually as an emulation of a user or their persona.

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindustani अवतार (avtār) / اوتار (avtār), from Sanskrit अवतार (avatāra, “descent of a deity from a heaven”), a compound of अव (ava, “off, away, down”) and the vṛddhi-stem of the root तॄ (tṝ, “to cross”) (whence तरति (tarati)). First attested in c. 1784 in The Hindu Wife or The Enchanted Fruit, by William Jones. The computing sense was first attested in video games in the 1980s, such…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.