Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Automaton
/ɔːˈtɒmətən/noun
A machine that operates on its own, or a person behaving mechanically.
The Greek roots
αὐτόματος
autómatos
self-acting, spontaneous
Literally: “self-acting thing”
Follow a root:αὐτόματος2 words
The story of the word
The Greek word is a neuter adjective doing duty as a noun: the self-acting thing. Homer has the gates of Olympus swing open αὐτόμαται in the Iliad and Hephaestus forging golden attendants that move by themselves, so the idea is as old as the vocabulary. English took automaton in the early 1600s for clockwork figures, and technical writing still resists automatons in favour of the Greek plural automata.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1610s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
automaticautonomyautopsyautomobile
In a sentence
The eighteenth-century automaton could write three sentences with a quill.
A finite automaton has states, transitions and nothing else.