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lightcastleNo, not the film. The word, and how it illustrates one of those wonderful vagaries of language.
As most know, it is a word borrowed from Sanskrit meaning a representation on Earth of a deity - the form the deity descends with. (It's been used that way since the late 1700s, and probably got into English from the Dutch, who first stole it from India.)
As long as I've been aware of the word, it has meant something like that. It quickly showed up in cyber-life as a person's representative in the online world. (I'd guess sometime around the mid-80s from what I remember.)
Unsurprisingly, French and Italian have this usage as well - manifestation/incarnation.
Interestingly, they both also have a use of the word meaning "transformation" - a nuance not really seen in English.
But French has another use, one which my mother grew up with and assures me was far more common until not too long ago. Avatars were "troubles or misadventures". D'avoir des avatars dans ton vie - To have troubles in your life.
It seems sometime in the early 20th century a French writer thought avatar was a version of or related to avanie, which is a public affront or humiliation. Perhaps he just thought it sounded enough like it that avatars should be a bearer of such misfortune. Regardless, the word took on an entirely different meaning in French which eclipsed the initial one. Only now, with the rise of avatar in the computer sense does it seem to be swinging back.
Words are weird.
As most know, it is a word borrowed from Sanskrit meaning a representation on Earth of a deity - the form the deity descends with. (It's been used that way since the late 1700s, and probably got into English from the Dutch, who first stole it from India.)
As long as I've been aware of the word, it has meant something like that. It quickly showed up in cyber-life as a person's representative in the online world. (I'd guess sometime around the mid-80s from what I remember.)
Unsurprisingly, French and Italian have this usage as well - manifestation/incarnation.
Interestingly, they both also have a use of the word meaning "transformation" - a nuance not really seen in English.
But French has another use, one which my mother grew up with and assures me was far more common until not too long ago. Avatars were "troubles or misadventures". D'avoir des avatars dans ton vie - To have troubles in your life.
It seems sometime in the early 20th century a French writer thought avatar was a version of or related to avanie, which is a public affront or humiliation. Perhaps he just thought it sounded enough like it that avatars should be a bearer of such misfortune. Regardless, the word took on an entirely different meaning in French which eclipsed the initial one. Only now, with the rise of avatar in the computer sense does it seem to be swinging back.
Words are weird.
