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''automaton'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260130210911-00-⌔

automaton - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

automaton (plural automatons or automata)

  • A machine or robot designed to follow a precise sequence of instructions.
    • ✤ He has spent many years on the automaton, and it must have cost thousands of pounds in experiment and construction.1
    • ✤ Nick had heard her play through the very beginning of it a dozen times, until he was screaming at her in his head to go on. Well, now she did, watching her own hands busying up and down the keyboard as if they were astonishing automata that she had wound up and set in motion, in perfect synchrony, to produce this silvery flow of sound.2
  • A person who acts like a machine or robot, often defined as having a monotonous lifestyle and lacking in emotion.
    • ✤ Due to her strict adherence to her daily schedule, Jessica was becoming more and more convinced that she was an automaton.
    • ✤ A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on ‘til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.3
    • ✤ —to the young man who filled a place at table as the permitted, not invited, the unrewarded labourer for an ungrateful taskmaster—the handsome dangler, allowed to join in a quadrille, on the condition of being an automaton before and after—the listener to young members, and old women of rank—the person who must bore nobody, but whom every body had a right to bore!4
  • A formal system, such as a finite-state machine or cellular automaton.
  • A toy in the form of a mechanical figure.
  • (dated) The self-acting power of the muscular and nervous systems, by which movement is effected without intelligent determination.

Etymology

From Ancient Greek αὐτόματον (autómaton), neuter of αὐτόματος (autómatos, “self moving, self willed”). Doublet of automat.

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ô-tŏm’ə-tən, ô-tŏm’ə-tŏn, ə-tŏm’ə-tŏn, IPA: /ɔːˈtɒmətən/, /-ˌtɒn/, /ə-/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC: ↩

  2. 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 9, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN: ↩

  3. July 12, 1816, Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval Monticello ↩

  4. 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “”, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, pages 228–229: ↩

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