avatar
n. countablen. a small picture or character that represents you in a video game or on a website. You choose it to show others who you are online.
n. a graphical representation of a user or the user's alter ego or character in a digital environment. Often used to denote the visual identity of a participant in social media, gaming, or virtual reality.
I spent an hour choosing the perfect clothes for my gaming avatar.
Many users prefer to use a cartoon avatar rather than a real photo to protect their privacy on public forums.
In the metaverse, your avatar serves as your primary interface for social interaction, allowing you to express personality through digital fashion and body language in a three-dimensional space.
First use appears c. 1784, in The Hindu Wife; or, The Enchanted Fruit, by William Jones. Borrowed from Hindustani अवतार (avtār) / اوتار (avtār), from Sanskrit अवतार (avatāra, “descent of a deity from a heaven”), a compound of अव (ava, “off, away, down”) and the vṛddhi-stem of the root तॄ (tṝ, “to cross”) (whence तरति (tarati)). In the computing sense, some use appeared in video games in the 1980s, such as the online roleplaying game Habitat (1985) by Lucasfilm Games (today LucasArts), by Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, later versions of the Ultima series (following religious use in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)), and the pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun (1989). Also popularized by the novel Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson.
Commonly takes the possessive ('my avatar', 'their avatar') or is paired with 'for' ('an avatar for the site').