avatar
noun
Brian X. ChenSam Leith
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Water. Earth. Fire. Air. These are just some of the elements and environments that video game avatars—the images representing and controlled by players—have faced since the days of Space Invaders, to say nothing of today's Pandora’s box of assorted baddies. Avatar comes from the Sanskrit word avatāraḥ, meaning “descent.” When avatar first appeared in English in the late 18th century, it referred to the descent of a deity to the earth—typically, the incarnation in earthly form of Vishnu or another Hindu deity. It later came to refer to any incarnation in human form, and then to any embodiment (such as the embodiment of a concept or philosophy), whether or not in the form of a person. All of these senses of avatar are still in use today, joined by the more recent computing/gaming sense, which may refer to “you” embodied as a mustachioed Italian plumber, for example, even if you are not, in fact, a mustachioed Italian plumber.
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Examples of avatar in a Sentence
Dan Bekerman, Deadline, 1 Nov. 2024
The Grateful Dead will be honored as the 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year, the Recording Academy announced Wednesday, 60 years after the groundbreaking jam band formed in 1965 and quickly became an avatar of the burgeoning counterculture based in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
—Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 23 Oct. 2024
Sometimes all of these little plastic avatars are a needless distraction from what is a compelling origin story by any measure.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 9 Oct. 2024
Their placement on the sets is meant to put the data (and the data’s avatars in the form of Kornacki and Llamas) at the center of the action.
—Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Avatar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avatar. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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