automaton
Americannoun
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a mechanical figure or contrivance constructed to act as if by its own motive power; robot.
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a person or animal that acts in a monotonous, routine manner, without active intelligence.
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something capable of acting automatically or without an external motive force.
noun
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a mechanical device operating under its own hidden power; robot
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a person who acts mechanically or leads a routine monotonous life
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of automaton
1605–15; < Latin: automatic device < Greek, noun use of neuter of autómatos spontaneous, acting without human agency, equivalent to auto- auto- 1 + -matos, adj. derivative from base of memonénai to intend, ménos might, force
Explanation
If you walk like an automaton, you move stiffly, like a robot. An automaton is something constructed to be human-like, or a person who seems to have lost the spark of life. When you see the word, think of Frankenstein's monster, or C3PO from Star Wars. They're not quite human, but they were made to appear so. Used metaphorically, this word suggests the loss of joy and sense of life that makes someone seem like a robot or zombie. After a bad loss, the baseball team might be sitting around like a bunch of automatons. They're mopey and lifeless.
Vocabulary lists containing automaton
Do it Yourself: Words Beginning with "AUTO"
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Mechanical Engineering
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The Hot Zone
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At January’s conference, robots, including Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, a 6-foot-2-inch automaton weighing in at just under 200 pounds with a digital smiley face, were the stars.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
On Wednesday he was an automaton, almost like a windup toy.
From Salon ● Dec. 19, 2025
But its protagonist is a machine: an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier, built by an Indian artisan in the late 1700s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2023
The application was consuming me, organizing my synapses like an automaton farmer who makes Munsen predictions regarding the historical flow of neurotransmission.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2023
Isabelle explained about the automaton and how Hugo had saved it from the fire.
From "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick
Campione has become known for her unique specialism in dolls, doll houses, automata, birdcages and corkscrews.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2024
There, in the Morris Museum’s collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata, is a music box from around 1877.
From New York Times ● Apr. 2, 2024
The link between these cellular automata and the pursuit of artificial life grew stronger when, more than two decades later, mathematician John Conway designed the Game of Life.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 6, 2023
There are numerous examples of such religious automata from the late medieval era onwards, including life-size sculptures of Christ and the Virgin Mary that were equipped with articulated limbs and animated by puppetry or clockwork.
From The Verge ● May 4, 2022
An undated eighteenth-century handbill announcing an exhibition of three of Vaucanson’s automata: the flute player, the drummer and the digesting duck.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Wilson clearly desires children to be quiet little automatons, instead of living, complex human beings.
From Salon ● Feb. 16, 2026
The World Robot Olympiad opened in Singapore on Wednesday with hundreds of international students, some as young as eight, set to compete using automatons to solve real-world problems.
From Barron's ● Nov. 26, 2025
In small factories across America, agile automatons are making everything from parts for AI supercomputers to the hulls of America’s future autonomous naval weapons.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025
The shrimp are the work of Amedeo Capelli, a self-taught carpenter and maker of hand-operated automatons, or moving devices.
From New York Times ● Mar. 13, 2024
“One ’em automatons, half pocket watch, half tin cup, and half growed man!”
From "The Journey of Little Charlie" by Christopher Paul Curtis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
