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automaton

[aw-tom-uh-ton, -tn] / ɔˈtɒm əˌtɒn, -tn /




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.

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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

The success of “Maybe Happy Ending” hinges in no small part on the miraculous performance of Darren Criss, who plays an automaton with a secretly sensitive heart.

From Los Angeles Times May 1, 2025

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

Unfortunately, it turned out once again that a colorless automaton wasn't quite the winning personality everyone was looking for.

From Salon Aug. 18, 2023

He was fixing to say something, but the fancy automaton conductor standing at the door said, “Sir? We’re trying to make up time.”

From "The Journey of Little Charlie" by Christopher Paul Curtis

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

Image: Public Domain Before they were surrogates for class fear, though, automata in Europe were spectacles.

From The Verge May 4, 2022

I wondered: Can cellular automata incorporate nonlocal entanglements?

From Scientific American Feb. 14, 2021

Even animals, in Descartes’ view, were just automata.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

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

But by the time Descartes catalyzed the Enlightenment in the 17th century, he had reduced other animals to mere automatons, tainting centuries of science with the assumption that anything unlike us is inherently inferior.

From New York Times Mar. 26, 2024

Some in the party are anxious about this and accuse Reeves and other shadow ministers of sounding "robotic", like "automatons".

From BBC Mar. 9, 2024

Of the core three arguments we have distinguished—the corpuscular philosophy, animals as automatons and the clockwork universe—they agree on the first, but each picks one and only one of the other two.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton




Vocabulary lists containing automaton


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