AVATAR • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Avatar

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/ˈævətˌɑr/ Listen

noun

Avatar n.

(Hindu Myth.) The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu.

An incarnation, embodiment or personification of a principle, quality, or attitude; used of people, mostly in a positive sense as a manifestation of a behavior or character worthy of admiration. "Martha Stewart, the home-and-hearth avatar whose products are now available at Kmart stores, is making upscale design touches like 200-thread-count cotton bed sheets something that most every American can aspire to."

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Etymology of 'Avatar'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Avatar" Quotes from Famous Books

... drop into your gripsack on your summer vacation—the poet whom you have so long desired to know personally—is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young poets—the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never neglect ...

— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... seeking after identity of consciousness with the One, the Hindu Avatars are only a part of the delusion, the Maya, in which men are steeped. To a pantheist, holding that his own consciousness of individuality is delusion, born of spiritual darkness and ignorance, the conception of an avatar or concrete presentation of deity as an individual is only still grosser delusion. "The name of God and the conventions of piety are as unreal as anything else in Maya," writes a modern British apostle of Hinduism, ...

— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... of the Bastille. Burke's Reflections, the work of a great thinker in a state of irritation bordering upon frenzy, had sounded the note of alarm. The revolution, as Burke maintained, was in fact the avatar of a diabolic power. It meant an attack upon the very organic principles of society. It therefore implied a complete breach of historical continuity, and a war against the reverence for 'prescription' and ...

— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... remained widely prevalent until the eighth century A.D., and it was not until four centuries later that it became practically extinct. The Brahmans now regained their former ascendency; declared Gautama to be an "avatar"—or incarnation—of their god Vishnu; proceeded to incorporate into their own creed some of the most popular features of the Buddhist system; and then entered upon a destruction of the monasteries, and a severe persecution of all Buddhists living ...

— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... Spain?" he enquires of John Murray. "I am a frank man, and frankness never offends me. Has anybody put you out of conceit with the book? . . . Tell me frankly and I will drink your health in Romany. Or would the appearance of the Bible on the first of October interfere with the avatar, first or second, of some very wonderful lion or Divinity, to whom George Borrow, who is NEITHER, must of course give place? Be frank with me, my dear Sir, and I will drink your ...

— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

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