automation

Etymology

It was formed in English from the stem of automatic and automaton, with the suffix -ion;^[2][3][4] other dictionaries call it an irregular formation from automatic and -ation^[5][6] or, like Barnhart, a contraction of the phrase automatic operation.^[7][8] In its modern sense the coinage is usually credited to Delmar S. Harder, vice-president of manufacturing at the Ford Motor Company,^[2][4][9] who in 1947 set up a group he called "automation engineers".^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

As a synonym of automatism, automatic action, from 1874 in the magazine Every Saturday until 1899, a sense now obsolete.^[2] The OED notes that 17th- and 18th-century examples of automation are probably misprints for automaton.^[2] Merriam-Webster dates its first sense to 1912.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The modern sense, the introduction of automatic equipment into manufacturing or another process, appears in 1948 in the American Machinist,^[2][7][4] and Etymonline notes that it is the large-scale, industrial counterpart of the older automatism.^[4] The verb automate was made from it by back-formation in 1954.^[7] The word now covers any system of control by electronic devices that does work once done by people,^[3][10] and also the degree to which a process is so controlled.^[10]

Timeline

• 1874 – automatism (obsolete by 1899).^[2]
• 1912 – Merriam-Webster's first known use.^[3]
• 1947 – Harder's "automation engineers" at Ford.^[7]
• 1948 – the use of automatic equipment in manufacturing.^[2][7][4]
• 1954 – the back-formation automate.^[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The use of machines, computers and other automatic devices to run an industrial or other process with little human labour: Automation has cut the number of workers on the assembly line.
2. The state of being operated automatically, or the extent to which a process is.

Word family

• automate

Related words

• automat
• automatic
• automatize
• automaton
• automatism
• cybernetics

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins