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Avatar
Definitions
- 1 A male given name from Sanskrit used in India.
- 1 An incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu. Hinduism
- 2 the manifestation of a Hindu deity (especially Vishnu) in human or superhuman or animal form wordnet
- 3 The embodiment of an idea or concept; an instantiation, especially a personification or incarnation.
"...that a new avatar of Mrs. Siddons has appeared at Covent Garden, in the shape of her niece Fanny Kemble..."
- 4 a new personification of a familiar idea wordnet
- 5 A complex and dynamic digital representation of a person or being in the form of a digital model, used online as a simulation or emulation of a person, or as a person's online alter ego, in a virtual world, virtual chat room, or metaverse. Internet
"The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse."
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- 6 A simple and static or nearly static digital representation of a person or being in the form of a small digital object, used online as a simulacrum or token of a person or that person's online alter ego, in any digital environment but especially in nonvirtual, nonmetaversal ones. Internet
Etymology
First use appears c. 1784, in The Hindu Wife; or, The Enchanted Fruit, by William Jones. Borrowed from Hindustani अवतार / 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”). In the computing sense, some use appeared in video games in the 1980s, such as the online roleplaying game Habitat (1985) by Lucasfilm Games (today LucasArts), by Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, later versions of the Ultima series (following religious use in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)), and the pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun (1989). Also popularized by the novel Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson.
Borrowed from Sanskrit अवतार (avatāra).
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