avatar
Syllables: av·a·tar/ˈæv.ə.tɑɹ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Commonwealth/ˌæv.əˈtɑː(ɹ)/
avatar noun: an incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.
Noun
avatar (plural avatars)
- An incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.
- Fish, Boar, Snake, Lion [footnote] The four first Avatars, or Incarnations of the Divine Spirit.1784, Raj Lakshi Debi [William Jones, pseudonym], The Hindu Wife or The Enchanted Fruit, Calcutta, →OCLC, →OL, page 237
- One which serves to act in place of or on behalf of the entity; a simulacrum.
- Last year, a 14-year-old boy died by suicide after falling in love with a chatbot from Character.AI. The last thing he did was have a conversation with an AI avatar that, possibly failing to recognize the severity of the situation, reportedly encouraged him to go through with his plan to “join her”.2025 July 16, Marcus Mendes, “Grok may be breaking App Store rules with sexualized AI chatbots, and that’s not the only problem”, in 9to5Mac
- Devices now track and record our every move and, whether we like it or not, each one of us will bequeath to posterity a virtual avatar, a digital being whose calls, messages, transactions, loves and losses will live on in a vast, unregulated cyberspace. The afterlife has arrived, at least for our...2013 November 27, Roger Cohen, “The past in our future”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC
- The embodiment of an idea or concept; an instantiation, especially an incarnation or personification.
- ...that a new avatar of Mrs. Siddons has appeared at Covent Garden, in the shape of her niece Fanny Kemble...1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 177
- And honest Alan, who was a grim fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, […]1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Dedication”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886...
- One which serves as the means through which the entity interacts with its environment; a player character or host.
- The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, New York: Bantam Books, →ISBN, pages 35–36
- A graphical representation of a user or persona; used in reference to any digital environment, but especially nonmetaversal ones.
- A character model, used virtually as an emulation of a user or their persona.
- A virtual intelligence is an advanced form of user interface software. VIs use a variety of methods to simulate natural conversation, including an audio interface and an avatar personality to interact with.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (science fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Computers: Virtual Intelligence (VI) Codex entry
Proper noun capitalized: Avatar
Avatar
- A male given name from Sanskrit used in India.
avatar meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
avatar in Hindi
- personification or simulacrum
- अवतार avtār
- earthly incarnation of a deity
- अवतार avtār
avatar in Tamil
- earthly incarnation of a deity
- அவதாரம் avatāram
avatar in Marathi
- personification or simulacrum
- अवतार avtār
- earthly incarnation of a deity
- अवतार avtār
avatar in Urdu
- earthly incarnation of a deity
- اَوتار avtār
More languagesFewer languages
- avatar in Bengali
- অবতার obotar
- avatar in Telugu
- అవతారము avatāramu, అవతారం avatāraṁ
- avatar in Malayalam
- അവതാരം avatāraṁ, അവതാർ avatāṟ
- avatar in Kannada
- ಅವತಾರ avatāra
- avatar in Punjabi
- ਅਵਤਾਰ avatār
- avatar in Gujarati
- અવતાર avatār
- avatar in Odia
- ଅବତାର abatāra
- avatar in Sanskrit
- अवतार avatāra
- avatar in Assamese
- অৱতাৰ owotar
- avatar in Arabic
- أَفَاتَار ʔafatār
- avatar in Indonesian
- avatar, awatara
- avatar in Thai
- บุคคลวัต, บุคลาธิษฐาน, อวตาร à-wá-dtaan, อวทาร์ à-wá-taa
- avatar in Vietnamese
- avatar, skin
- Sindhi
- اوتار otār
Examples of avatar in a sentence
- Oh, no, I clipped my avatar through the barrier!
- Bacon hairs (aka bacons) are a very common avatar type that is found on Roblox.
- Biden, an avatar of that establishment, is not recanting his past enthusiasm for engagement.
Synonyms of avatar
Forms of avatar
| plural | avatars |
|---|
Origin of avatar
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 as the online roleplaying game Habitat (1985) by Lucasfilm Games (today LucasArts), 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). This sense was also popularized by the novel Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson.
Borrowed from Sanskrit अवतार (avatāra).
Words formed from avatar
Words that rhyme with avatar
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- char
- tar
- var
- AAR
- bazaar
- caviar
- lodestar
- Mullingar
- Myanmar
- scar
- ajar
- arr
- barre
- boudoir
- cigar
- cymar
- czar
- disbar
- gar
- guitar
- haar
- instar
- lar
- Loire
- noir
- NPR
- omar
- schwar
- their
- tl;dr
- tsar
- TTR
- upbar
- USSR
- yar
- -dar
- AGR
- alcazar
- armoire
- au revoir
- bahar
- baignoire
- Bashar
- beaux-arts
- beer bar
- Berger Picard
- Bihar
- bête noire
Questions about avatar
- What does avatar mean?
- Avatar means an incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.
- What is avatar in Hindi?
- Avatar in Hindi is अवतार (avtār). See Avatar meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is avatar?
- Avatar can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce avatar?
- Avatar is pronounced /ˌæv.əˈtɑː(ɹ)/ (Commonwealth).
- What is the plural of avatar?
- The plural of avatar is avatars.
Words near avatar in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: avatar (page history and authors); Avatar (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)-Vealhurl-avatar.wav, en-us-avatar.ogg, en-au-avatar.ogg.
Cite this entry: “avatar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/avatar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.