avatar

plural avatars

1. HinduismAn 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

2. A representation within a dimension of an entity that exists outside of that dimension.
   1. broadlyOne 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

      1 more example

      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 cyberbeings.

      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

   2. broadlyThe 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

      1 more example

      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, →OCLC, pages v–vi

   3. broadlyOne 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

   4. broadlyA graphical representation of a user or persona; used in reference to any digital environment, but especially nonmetaversal ones.
   5. broadlyA 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

      Synonyms: avi, skin

1. A male given name from Sanskrit used in India.