automaton

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin automatum (“an automatic contrivance”), also automaton,^[2][3][4][5] and its own source borrowed from Ancient Greek αὐτόματον (autómaton, “a marionette”),^[2] the neuter, used as a noun, of αὐτόματος (autómatos, “acting of itself, spontaneous”),^{[2][6][4][7][5]} from αὐτός (autós, “self”) and -ματος (-matos, “thinking, animated, willing”).^[3][4] Etymonline takes the second part from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”),^[3] the root of mind;^[4][7] the OED compares Latin commentus (“feigned”) and μέμονα (mémona).^[2] Etymonline notes the Latin word in Suetonius.^[3] English also had the earlier form automate, which Weekley derives from French, citing Rabelais and Cotgrave.^[8] The Greek noun appears in an English text slightly before the first English use, in Coryate's “Crudities” (1611), for the device that moved the eyes of a picture of a gentlewoman.^[2] The word also passed into French automate, Italian automa, Spanish autómata, Dutch automaat and German Automat.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A moving device with a hidden mechanism, which seems to work by itself: before 1614, in Cornwallis's Certaine Paradoxes, and in its earliest uses mostly in figures and comparisons.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1610s, and the Shorter Oxford to the early 17th century.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The Greek literal idea, a thing with the power of moving of itself, is recorded in English from the Fletcher play The Bloody Brother (printed 1639, before 1625 according to Barnhart) to 1877.^[2][4][9] Johnson (1755) still defined it as a machine "that hath the power of motion within itself".^[10] From the 1640s the word was applied to living bodies seen as machines,^[2] as in Boyle's "these living automata, human bodies",^[5] and to creatures taken to act without higher consciousness: Priestley reports that Descartes made the souls of brutes "mere automata".^[5][2] From 1785 it was used of a person who behaves mechanically and without feeling.^[2][11] This reversed the etymology, as Joseph John Murphy remarked in 1879: an automaton is "something which can only act as it is acted on", and "the meaning of the word is at variance with its etymology".^[3] In the 20th century it also came to mean a humanoid robot, at first often in science fiction (1922), and in computing an abstract machine governed by a set of states and rules (1949).^[2]

Timeline

• before 1614 – a moving device with a concealed mechanism.^[2]
• 1639 – a being or thing with the power of spontaneous motion (obsolete by 1877).^[2][9] The OED's record is Fletcher's The Bloody Brother, which Barnhart dates to before 1625.^[2][4]
• 1644 – a living being regarded as the sum of its physical functions.^[2] Etymonline dates this use to the 1670s.^[3]
• 1664 – an organism acting purely involuntarily or mechanically.^[2]
• 1785 – a person who acts mechanically or without emotion.^[2]
• 1922 – a humanoid robot, an android.^[2]
• 1949 – in computing, a machine defined by states and rules.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mechanical figure or device with concealed power, which seems to move by itself, often imitating a person or animal: The clock's little brass automaton bows on the hour.^[11][9][2]
2. A robot or android.^[11][9][2]
3. A person who acts mechanically, without thought or feeling: Exhausted, the night-shift nurses moved like automatons.^[11][2][5]
4. (computing) A real or hypothetical machine whose response to every permitted input is fixed by a set of states and rules.^[2][5]
5. An animal or organism that acts purely by involuntary or mechanical response.^[2][5]
6. (archaic) Something that has the power of moving within itself.^[9][2][5]

Word family

• automatous

Related words

• automat
• automatic
• automatization
• automatize
• automation
• auto-
• mind
• mentor

Usage notes

The plurals automata, following Greek and Latin, and automatons both remain in use.^[2][11] Burchfield's edition of Fowler (1998) recommends automata when the word is used collectively and otherwise automatons; the OED calls this the only such attempt at a rule, and finds automatons especially frequent for a person who acts mechanically.^[2]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins