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January 2010Word History of the Month: avatarLast month's worldwide premiere of the sci-fi epic Avatar sent plenty of folks to the theaters to watch director James Cameron's latest blockbuster, and it also sent avatar to the number one spot on the Top Twenty list of monthly online dictionary lookups. The concept of the avatar has been around for centuries. Avatar traces to the Sanskrit word for descent; in Hinduism it usually refers to one of the ten forms (human or animal) the god Vishnu assumes when he descends to earth to combat evil. When English-speakers first adopted the word in the late 18th century, they used it in a sense similar to the original Sanskrit term. The applications of avatar have broadened considerably since then. These days, it is often used in cyberspace, where avatar refers to an on-screen representation (sometimes accurate and sometimes fanciful) of the computer user, of the character in a computer game, or, as James Cameron uses it, as a human-built physical body incorporating human intelligence. |