Autonomous

//ɔːˈtɒnəməs// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Self-governing. Intelligent, sentient, self-aware, thinking, feeling, governing independently.
  2. 2
    Acting on one's own or independently; of a child, acting without being governed by parental or guardian rules.

    "Though Cade has for years reported on the development of autonomous vehicles, test drives usually have so-called safety drivers who ride along and can take over in case something goes wrong."

  3. 3
    Used with no subject, indicating an unknown or unspecified agent; used in similar situations as the passive in English (the difference being that the theme in the English passive construction is the subject, while in the Celtic autonomous construction the theme is the object and there is no subject).
Adjective
  1. 1
    (of persons) free from external control and constraint in e.g. action and judgment wordnet
  2. 2
    existing as an independent entity wordnet
  3. 3
    (of political bodies) not controlled by outside forces wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
independentsovereignabsolutearbitraryaristocraticautarchic

Example

More examples

"The private colleges and universities of the United States are autonomous."

Etymology

From autonomy + -ous.

Related phrases

autonomous communityautonomous oblastautonomous okrugautonomous prefectureautonomous regionautonomous sensory meridian responseautonomous vehicleautonomous areaautonomous navigation

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.