AUTOMATON • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Automaton

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/ɔtˈɑmətˌɑn/ Listen

noun

Automaton n. (pl. L. automata, E. automatons)

Any thing or being regarded as having the power of spontaneous motion or action. "So great and admirable an automaton as the world." "These living automata, human bodies."

A self-moving machine, or one which has its motive power within itself; applied chiefly to machines which appear to imitate spontaneously the motions of living beings, such as men, birds, etc.

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Etymology of 'Automaton'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Automaton" Quotes from Famous Books

... previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... of his association are to be elected the worker is guided in voting by his technical knowledge, and it is almost impossible that the choice should fall upon any but the best qualified persons. But, further, this simple spinner in Freeland is no mere automaton, whose knowledge and skill begin and end with the petty details of his own business: he is familiar with at least one or several other branches of industry; and from this again it follows that the ...

— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... sound to indicate that they had landed, always crowding forward, carrying the battle to his adversary, refusing to yield a step when to yield meant to evade punishment. Passion, deep and gripping, had made him for the moment an insensate automaton; he was devoid of any feeling except a consuming desire to punish the ...

— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... cadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion. In like manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises man to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an automaton. The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes the sinner, in its right {99} exercise furnishes forth the saint. All that we mean by moral progress, by "the steady gain of man," his rise to more exalted ideals, his conquest ...

— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... have been an automaton for all the heed he gave to the taxi or its inquisitive occupant. But his aspect was almost forgotten in the far stranger discovery that the car was empty. Both windows were open, and the bright lights of a corner shop flashed into the interior, yet not a soul was ...

— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

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