Word.ws English Dictionary

autist

/ˈɔː.tɪst/

autist noun: an autistic person, a person with autism.

Noun

autist (plural autists)

  1. An autistic person, a person with autism.
    • Most autists are not artists, as most artists are not autists; but in the chance of their coming together […] there must, I think, be an interaction between the two, so that the art takes on some of the strengths and weaknesses of autism […]1995, Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars
    • Like children and animals, autists have relatively rudimentary conceptual lives.2011, W M Bernstein, A Basic Theory of Neuropsychoanalysis
  2. (Internet, derogatory, offensive, often self-deprecatory) A person characterized by abnormal and unhealthy focus or persistence, low self-awareness and unhealthy hatred of opposition or criticism.
    • autists arguing about 'muh graphics'

Forms of autist

pluralautists

Origin of autist

From autism + -ist.

Questions about autist

What does autist mean?
Autist means an autistic person, a person with autism.
What part of speech is autist?
Autist is a noun.
How do you pronounce autist?
Autist is pronounced /ˈɔː.tɪst/.
What is the plural of autist?
The plural of autist is autists.

Words near autist in the dictionary

  1. autismal
  2. autismland
  3. autismlike
  4. autismogenic
  5. autisms
  6. autist
  7. autistic
  8. autistic disorder
  9. autistic psychopathy
  10. autistic savant
  11. autistic spectrum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: autist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-autist.wav.

Cite this entry: “autist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/autist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.